Ken Griffin, the hedge fund billionaire who owns Citadel Securities, bought an almost complete Stegosaurus fossil at auction on Wednesday, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The purchase price was $44.6 million, blowing away the old record of $32 million for the most expensive fossil ever bought.
A press release from Sotheby’s noted there were seven bidders on the Stegosaurus fossil, dubbed “Apex,” and only identified the winner of the auction as anonymous. But the Wall Street Journal was the first to report the 55-year-old Griffin had put in the highest bid, telling the newspaper he would loan it out to a U.S. institution. “Apex was born in America and is going to stay in America,” Griffin reportedly said.
The fossil was excavated in Moffat County, Colorado on private land near the town of Dinosaur in 2022 and 2023. Dinosaur gets its unique name from its proximity to Dinosaur National Monument. Apex is described by Sotheby’s as being “preserved in exquisite detail, exhibiting little distortion, and retaining much of their original shape and surface characteristics.”
“Virtually complete, with 254 fossil bone elements (of an approximate total of 319), the skeleton belonged to a large, robust adult individual, and evidence of arthritis, indicating that it lived to an advanced age,” the auction house said in a press release. “The specimen shows no signs of combat related injuries, or evidence of post-mortem scavenging, and exhibits a number of interesting pathologies.”
The sale of Apex is controversial within scientific circles, given the fact that most people think such rare and important history shouldn’t be controlled by the whims of private owners. In fact, the Washington Post notes the original Sotheby’s auction listed the fossil as an undetermined species of stegosaurus, likely because scientists haven’t been able to properly study this find. Obviously, Griffin’s quote to the Wall Street Journal is an attempt to make it appear like he is doing something generous for the public good by keeping the fossil in the United States, but it’s not year clear what kind of access any institution may have to the fossil beyond just being able to put it on display for some period of time.
Griffin’s Citadel Securities came under fire back in 2021 during the Gamestop meme stock craze over allegations that he had something to do with the outages at Robinhood that limited trading. The hashtag “KenGriffinLied” even started to trend, but the billionaire called the allegations conspiracy theories, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Griffin is believed to be worth about $38 billion and has given over $60 million to Republicans in this election cycle, according to the Financial Times. Griffin supported Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the primaries and has yet to give any money to Donald Trump, as far as anyone knows. Griffin has previously said he’d make a decision about supporting Trump after he saw who the former president would choose for a vice presidential candidate. Trump chose Ohio Senator J.D. Vance this week, which means Griffin’s donations could extend to Trump in the near future, depending on how he feels about the choice.
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