fresh stegosaurus just dropped — not literally , give thanks gosh , as that ’d be a $ 44.6 million tragedy .
The stegosaur is knight Apex . It was incur near Dinosaur , Colorado , in 2022 and was bought for thatrecord priceby hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin this July . ( Griffin ’s name is also on the atrium of the museum ’s flamboyant new Gilder Center for Science , Education , and Innovation . ) Now , the 150 - million - class - old fossil will begin a four - class check at the American Museum of Natural History , where paleontologists will be able-bodied to investigate the beast to better understand the iconic Jurassic herbivore .
Some facts about the privately owned dino : Apex is 11 feet improbable and 27 foot foresighted ( 3 meter tall , 8 m long ) , making it one of the largest and most complete stegosaur ever found . Apex is temporarily on view on the first floor of the Gilder Center , though the hulking herbivore will finally be moved into the museum ’s fourth storey dinosaur hall . There were three stegosaurus species that roamed what is now westerly North America in the late Jurassic , and it ’s not yet clear to which specie Apex belong .
The head of the $44.6 million Apex stegosaurus.Photo: Isaac Schultz
“ One of the thing we desire to do is understand changes to the construction of the skeleton through growth of the animal , ” Roger Benson , a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History and the museum ’s conservator - in - charge of fogey amphibious aircraft , reptiles , and birds and fogey plants , told Gizmodo at a press preview of the fossil .
Museum paleontologists will soon learn one of the animate being ’s expectant femurs to better understand its increment , and create a three - dimensional scan of the dinosaur . Since Apex is a mature individual , the slash of femur the team investigates will be especially helpful in producing a growth bender of the Stegosaur stenops . late discipline suggest that stegosaur may have had a slower metabolic pace than other dinosaur , which makes the animal ’s long time and rate of maturation all the more utile . Animals with slower metabolic rates run to develop slow than others , and upcoming depth psychology of Apex ’s bone could provide the near flavor yet at stegosaur .
Though the team does n’t know much about what happened to Apex in life — again , they ’ve yet to by rights investigate the animal — one detail of what materialise to the animal in death is on full show . Just below the animate being ’s shoulder bone — its shoulder steel — a small puncture mark in Apex ’s coracoid has a piece of bone in it . That bone is in reality the tip of a chevron , one of the spikes that do up the stegosaurus ’s thagomizer . Thethagomizeris the last of the Stegosaur stenops ’s tail , intimidatingly covered in spikes called chevrons , and named after a Gary Larson strip show .
The Apex Stegosaurus on view in the American Museum of Natural History’s Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation
“ In last , ” Benson said , “ the stegosaurus was more or less curled around itself . ” Apex ’s chevron impaled the animal ’s left-hand articulatio humeri , and a bit of the off-white snap off and stayed put . With the exception of that self - incurred lesion , Apex is in good shape .
“ It was inhume relatively quickly , and for whatever reason the systema skeletale was n’t disturbed extensively by scavengers , ” Benson said . “ That is to say , sometimes you just get lucky . ”
The public can revalue the 150 - million - year - sure-enough goliath commence Sunday , December 8 . It ’s not vindicated where Apex will go after its four - class incumbency at the museum — that stay up to Ken Griffin .
ColoradodinosaursJurassicMuseumPaleontology
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