A rare Nanotyrannus skeleton named Jodi sold for $47.3 million at Sotheby's, becoming the second-most expensive dinosaur fossil ever auctioned. The sale has sparked debate among scientists about private ownership of significant fossils.
A rare skeleton of a dinosaur once mistaken for a young Tyrannosaurus rex has sold for $47.3 million at a Sotheby's auction in New York. The specimen, nicknamed Jodi, is one of only three known Nanotyrannus skeletons and fetched more than five times its upper estimate of $9 million.
The auction took place on Tuesday and concluded after a 12-minute bidding war among six interested parties. The buyer's identity has not been disclosed. According to Sotheby's, the sale makes Jodi the second-most valuable dinosaur fossil ever sold, trailing only a Tyrannosaurus rex named Gus, which sold for $50.1 million in July. The third-most valuable was a Stegosaurus named Apex, sold for $44.6 million in July 2024.
Jodi stands approximately 10 feet (3 meters) tall and measures 19.6 feet (6 meters) from nose to tail. Sotheby's described the skeleton as "excellent exhibition-ready," comprising about 191 fossil-bone elements and a "beautifully preserved, virtually complete skull." The auction house noted that the skull contains 53 bones and roughly 50 teeth at different stages of development. Missing bones were replaced with custom 3D-printed and sculpted elements.
The skeleton was discovered in 2019 by rancher Jodi Pierson on her land in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana. It was excavated by commercial paleontologist Clayton Phipps, who also discovered the "Dueling Dinosaurs" fossil eight miles away in 2006. That specimen, featuring a Nanotyrannus and a Triceratops in apparent combat, was crucial to research published by Lindsay Zanno and James Napoli that confirmed Nanotyrannus as a distinct genus separate from T. rex.
For decades, paleontologists debated whether Nanotyrannus was a separate species or a juvenile T. rex. Research published in 2025 concluded that Nanotyrannus was a distinct, smaller predator that lived alongside T. rex approximately 67 million years ago. Megan Jenkins, a palaeontologist at the University of Portsmouth, told BBC Radio 4 that Nanotyrannus is "a lot smaller and its a lot more gracile. So it's very sort-of sleek, slender, [with] blade-like teeth for slicing through meat."
Jodi was initially exhibited as a juvenile T. rex at London's Frieze Masters art fair in October 2023, before the genus was officially classified. It is the first Nanotyrannus skeleton to come to market since the existence of the genus was confirmed by US researchers last October.
The high price of the fossil has reignited debate in the scientific community over whether dinosaur remains should be sold privately or displayed publicly. Steve Brusatte, a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh, called the sale "harrowing" in comments to the BBC. "We've really just found out that Nanotyrannus is real, and now one of the best skeletons is about to be sold to the highest bidder, and it's harrowing to think it could disappear into the vaults of a collector rather than displayed on a museum where it can wow and inspire kids and families and the public at large," Brusatte said.
David Hone, a paleontologist at Queen Mary University of London, expressed surprise at the sale price. "It does feel like this is a bubble of prices on dinosaurs which must burst at some point, they can't keep rising forever," Hone said in an email. He added that without proper study, the specimen is "effectively outside of science."
However, Jenkins noted that there are two sides to the debate. "I don't begrudge the people involved for wanting to sell it for such a large amount of money," she said. "Although its a scary prospect, actually a lot of them have ended up in the public eye... these things without a doubt will end end up in a museum at some point."
The sale highlights the growing tension between the commercial market for fossils and the scientific community's need for public access to specimens. As prices for rare fossils rise, researchers worry that significant discoveries may become inaccessible to the public and to scientific study, potentially limiting educational opportunities and research progress.
Sources
This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.
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