A rare dinosaur skeleton sold in New York for $47.3 million. Its name is Jodi. A rancher found it in Montana in 2019. Many scientists are worried, because nobody knows who the new owner is.
Jodi is one of only three substantial Nanotyrannus skeletons known to science, and she went under the hammer at Sotheby’s on Tuesday after a twelve-minute battle between six bidders. At $47.3m she fetched five times the top estimate — the second highest price ever paid for a dinosaur. She came out of the Hell Creek Formation in Montana, 191 bones and a near-complete skull, sold with “full rights”: her owner may make and sell replicas.
Palaeontologists are uneasy. Thomas Holtz, of the University of Maryland, notes that museums are closing over shortfalls a tenth of Jodi’s price, and that a skeleton hidden in a private ballroom is “no different than if it had just been left in the ground”. Sotheby’s replies that the sale rewards those who dug her out and saved her: on private American land a fossil belongs to the landowner, and without a market much would erode away unseen.