The new stegosaurus just flopped, not literally, thank god, because it would be a $44.6 million disaster.
The stegosaurus is called Apex. It was found near Dinosaur, Colorado in 2022 and purchased for this record price by hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin this July. (Griffin’s name is also in the atrium of the museum’s new Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation.) Now, the 150-million-year-old fossil will begin a four-year stay at the American Museum of Natural History, where paleontologists will be able to investigate the animal to better understand the iconic Jurassic herbivore.
Some facts about the privately owned dino: Apex is 11 feet tall and 27 feet long (3 meters high, 8 m long), making it one of the largest and most complete stegosaurs ever ever found Apex can be seen temporarily on the first floor of the Gilder Center, though the large herbivore will eventually move to the museum’s fourth-floor dinosaur hall. There were three species of stegosaurus roaming what is now western North America in the late Jurassic, and it’s still unclear which species Apex belonged to.
“One of the things we want to do is understand changes in skeletal structure as the animal grows,” said Roger Benson, American Museum of Natural History paleontologist and curator in charge of fossil amphibians. and museum reptiles. , and fossil birds and plants, he told Gizmodo in a press preview of the fossil.
Paleontologists at the museum will soon study one of the animal’s large femurs to better understand its growth and create a three-dimensional exploration of the dinosaur. Because Apex is a mature individual, the portion of femur the team is investigating will be particularly useful in producing a growth curve for the stegosaurus. Recent studies suggest that Stegosaurus may have had a slower metabolic rate than other dinosaurs, making the animal’s age and growth rate more useful. Animals with slower metabolic rates tend to grow more slowly than others, and upcoming analyzes of the Apex bone could provide the best look yet at Stegosaurus.
While the team doesn’t know much about what happened to Apex in life—again, they haven’t properly investigated the animal yet—one detail of what happened to the dead animal is on full display. Just below the animal’s scapula, the shoulder blade, a small puncture mark on the Apex coracoid has some bone. This bone is actually the tip of a chevron, one of the spikes that make up the stegosaurus’ tagomizer. The tagomizer it’s the end of the stegosaurus’ tail, covered in intimidating spikes called chevrons, and named after a strip by Gary Larson.
“In death,” Benson said, “the stegosaurus was more or less coiled around itself.” The Apex’s chevron impaled the animal’s left shoulder and some of the bone broke off and stayed. With the exception of this self-inflicted wound, Apex is in good shape.
“It was buried relatively quickly, and for whatever reason, the skeleton was not disturbed extensively by scavengers,” Benson said. “I mean, sometimes you just get lucky.”
The public can appreciate the 150-million-year-old behemoth from Sunday, December 9. It’s unclear where Apex will go after his four-year tenure at the museum, that’s up to Ken Griffin.
