Lev Radin/Sipa USA via AP Images (Apex); Shutterstock.com (background)

Dino Discovery

While walking near his home in May 2022, Jason Cooper noticed a large bone sticking out of a rock. He had just discovered the largest, and one of the most complete, stegosaurus skeletons ever. 

This July, that skeleton went up for sale at an auction house called Sotheby’s in New York City. It sold for $44.6 million—making it the world’s most expensive fossil.

Rebuilding Apex

Cooper makes his living as a fossil hunter. He found the stegosaurus remains on his property in northwestern Colorado. The region is the richest source of dinosaur fossils in the United States.

After the discovery, Cooper began a nearly two-year process to prepare the fossil, which he named Apex, for display. First, he and his team excavated Apex’s bones.

The skeleton was buried in hard sandstone, which protected the bones. Researchers believe the dinosaur was healthy and lived to an old age. They found no signs of battle-related injuries.

Cooper and his crew carefully removed layers of rock from the 254 bones they found. Then they rebuilt the skeleton like a giant puzzle. Once they had it just right, they took Apex apart and shipped the bones to New York. They put Apex together again in Sotheby’s gallery.

Cooper understands why the buyer at the auction was so interested in purchasing Apex.

“I can feel their excitement because it’s the excitement I had,” Cooper says in a video made for Sotheby’s. “Then they’re hopefully going to transfer that on to somebody else, like a museum.”

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