Stegosaurus Apex was "born in America and will stay in America," billionaire Ken Griffin, after recently auctioning off the dinosaur skeleton for a record $44.6 million in contested bidding with six other potential buyers, BTA reported.
The Florida-born tycoon is seriously committed to preserving and displaying generations of prehistoric artifacts that tell the story of our planet's past. American media expressed hope that his example would be contagious for other collectors.
During the auction, Ken Griffin did not give up the Stegosaurus for a moment, constantly bidding for the fossilized skeleton. He is determined to get hold of it and keep Apex in the US. According to media reports, the billionaire was highly motivated to buy the fossil after a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex named Stan was bought and taken to a natural history museum in Abu Dhabi in 2022. It was acquired for a then-record $31.8 million.
Apex is worth the investment, experts say. According to the Sotheby's auction house, which sold the fossil, the find is "the best that has ever come on the market". It is no coincidence that the interest has been significant - with an initial estimate of between four and six million US dollars, Apex sold for almost US $45 million. This stegosaurus is believed to have roamed the Earth about 150 million years ago.
The fossilized skeleton was discovered in 2022 in the state of Colorado by paleontologist Jason Cooper. Stegosaurus, a herbivore, is one of the most recognizable dinosaurs in the world. Apex is 3.3 meters tall and 8.2 meters long from nose to tail. The specimen is believed to have been large and lived long enough to develop arthritis.
Its new owner, Ken Griffin (55), is the founder and CEO of the hedge fund Citadel. However, he does not plan to keep the Apex for his personal collection, but is determined to donate it to a museum in the US so that as many people as possible can get to know it. Griffin's team, keenly interested in the natural sciences, is exploring this possibility.
The billionaire has had a serious interest in dinosaur fossils for several years, and Apex is not his first Jurassic adventure. In 2018, Griffin donated $16.5 million to the Field Museum. in Chicago to display the largest dinosaur ever discovered, the Titanosaurus Maximo. It was found in Argentina in 2014, and its length is over 37 meters.
The rich Griffin's interests extend beyond dinosaur fossils. The American, whose personal fortune amounts to about 38 billion US dollars according to the publication "Forbes", is among the biggest collectors of works of art in the world. It is believed to own works and artifacts worth one billion US dollars.
In 2021, Ken Griffin pays $43.2 million for a copy of the first edition of the US Constitution, then donates the exhibit to an Arkansas museum for the public to access.
Griffin's interest and passion for collecting began, as he himself admits, during a trip to New York in 1999. Then he accidentally entered the auction house "Sotheby" and is impressed by one of the famous ballerinas, a creation of Edgar Degas. He tries to acquire her, but fails. "I bid, I bid - there was a blow with the hammer, but the price was not what I offered, I was not ready to go that high," the rich man told the publication "Vanity Fair". "I have never been so disappointed in my life… The next day I called Sotheby's. and I offered an even larger amount to buy the work - that was the beginning of my passion for art,'' recalls Ken Griffin.
Since then it has been among the regular participants in auctions. In 2020, it gave $100 million for Jean-Michel Basquiat's Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump, significantly less than the $500 million it paid five years earlier for two other works of art: "Number 17A" of the American Jackson Pollock and Interchange by Willem de Kooning, informs the electronic edition "Artnewspaper".
With the acquisition of the Stegosaurus Apex, Ken Griffin is about to make a lasting impact on high-end collectors, revealing the allure of prehistoric artifacts, US media reports.