The founder of the hedge fund Citadel is the second richest investor in the world and, as of a few hours ago, the owner of Apex, “the largest and most complete stegosaurus ever found.” Kenneth C. Griffin paid $44.
6 million for the skeleton, which is 11 feet tall and nearly 27 feet long from nose to tail , at an auction held on Wednesday at Sotheby’s. The final price tag shattered pre-sale estimates of between $4 million and $6 million. It is the highest amount ever paid for a dinosaur skeleton, and exceeds the $32 million paid four years ago by Abu Dhabi for Stan, a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Discovered only two years ago on private land in an area of Colorado, Moffat County, well known for its Upper Jurassic deposits, Apex stood out from the beginning because it is one of the few skeletons found intact, according to the auction house. It is made up of 254 fossil bone elements of an approximate total of 319. Its future will now probably be inside a U.
S. museum, since Griffin has emphasized that “Apex was born in America and is going to stay in America.” This is not the first Jurassic adventure by Griffin, who in 2018 donated $16.
5 million to a Chicago museum to finance the exhibition of a cast of the largest dinosaur ever discovered, but it does represent one of the first known incursions of the great wolves of Wall Street into this market, which until now had received more attention from Hollywood figures such as Leonardo DiCaprio or Nicolas Cage. To date, Griffin’s trac.