Nanotyrannus skeleton auction: rare 'Jodi' fossil sells for $47.3m at Sotheby's New York
A rare Nanotyrannus skeleton named "Jodi" sold at a Nanotyrannus skeleton auction at Sotheby's in New York on Tuesday for $47.3m, making it one of the world's most expensive fossils and, per Sotheby's, the second most valuable dinosaur ever sold at auction.
Nanotyrannus skeleton auction: rare 'Jodi' fossil sells for $47.3m at Sotheby's New York
A rare Nanotyrannus skeleton, a smaller relative of Tyrannosaurus rex, went under the hammer at Sotheby's in New York on Tuesday and sold for $47.3m - a price that puts the fossil among the most expensive ever sold and, according to the auction house, second only among dinosaurs at auction.
The Nanotyrannus skeleton auction concerned a specimen named "Jodi" after the person who found the remains, and it drew criticism from parts of the scientific community.
A twelve-minute bidding battle
The sale ended after a twelve-minute contest in which six bidders competed online and over the phones, with the winning bid ultimately placed on the phone, according to Sotheby's.
The result far outstripped the house's own expectations: Sotheby's had initially estimated that the skeleton would sell for $6m to $9m.
Per Sotheby's, the sale makes "Jodi" the second most valuable dinosaur ever sold at auction, and the buyer has not been publicly identified.
Found in Montana in 2019
The remains were discovered in 2019 by Jodi Pierson on her privately owned land in the Hell Creek Formation in Garfield County, Montana, near the town of Jordan. The skeleton was unveiled at a Manhattan auction earlier this month.
By Sotheby's measurements, the mounted specimen is:
- 19.6ft long from nose to tail
- around 9.6ft tall on the armature
- made up of approximately 191 fossil bone elements
What Sotheby's says about Nanotyrannus
The auction house said "Jodi" is one of only three substantial Nanotyrannus skeletons known to science, and the first to come to market since the genus was confirmed last fall.
Sotheby's described Nanotyrannus as a fast, highly specialized carnivorous tyrannosaurid that lived alongside Tyrannosaurus rex at the end of the Cretaceous, about 67 million years ago. Judging from overall size and the degree of bone development, the skeleton belonged to an adult individual, the house's description said.
The genus was once hypothesized to be an adolescent T. rex, but Nanotyrannus has been shown to have over 150 morphological differences that distinguish it from its much larger cousin, according to Sotheby's.
Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby's vice-chairman and Worldwide Head of Science & Natural History, thanked the team who assisted in the efforts to "excavate and save 'Jodi'". She said their passion and expertise were fundamental to the fossil's story and that the result recognized both that work and the enduring fascination with the Nanotyrannus.
Scientists push back on private sales
The sale and cost of the fossil prompted criticism from some in the science community.
Thomas R Holtz Jr, vertebrate paleontology principal lecturer at the University of Maryland, said his "concerns about the sale of Jodi are the same general concerns about all these multimillion-dollar sales of fossils".
His objections, as he laid them out:
- Some museums are closing or being threatened with closure over cost overruns of about one-tenth of Jodi's final cost. He named the Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel in Philadelphia and the Sternberg Museum of Natural History at Fort Hays State University.
- A well-funded museum could gather multiple good skeletons for the price of this one, since the total cost of excavation, preparation and mounting of a skeleton like this is probably on the order of $1m at most, possibly much less.
- Potentially scientifically significant fossils like Jodi can be lost to research and the public when they are in private hands.
Holtz said that if the purchaser donates it to a museum, scientists can measure, sample and scan the bones - but if it stays in a billionaire's mansion, it is effectively lost to both the public and the scientific community, no different than being left in the ground.
Linda Ivany, professor of evolutionary paleoecology at Syracuse University, told the New York Times: "These amazing fossils should stay in the public sphere for scientists to study, for children to be awed and inspired".
The buyer of "Jodi" has not been publicly identified; if the purchaser donates the skeleton to a museum, scientists could measure, sample and scan the bones, Holtz said.
