The 25 -kilograms rock, called NWA 16788, was discovered in the Sahara desert, in Niger, by a meteorite hunter in November 2023. It would have been swept away from the surface of March by the impact of a massive asteroid, then traveled 225 million kilometers to the earth, according to Sotheby’s. The estimated value before the sale was between $ 2 and 4 million.
The buyer’s identity was not immediately revealed. The final auction amounted to $ 4.3 million. After the addition of various costs and costs, the official sale price amounted to around $ 5.3 million, making it the most precious meteorite ever sold at auction, notes Sotheby’s. The live auctions were slow, the auctioneer trying to arouse more offers and reduce minimum bets.
The skeleton of Dinosaur, on the other hand, sparked a fierce battle between six bidders for six minutes. Estimated between $ 4 and 6 million before the sale, it is one of the four known skeletons of Ceratosaurus nasicornis and the only juvenile skeleton of the species, which resembles a smaller Tyrannosaure Rex.
The auctions for the Skeleton started with a high purchase offer of $ 6 million, then skyrocketed with $ 500,000 bonds, then $ a million, finally reaching $ 26 million.
The applause followed the auction.
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The happy buyer plans to lend the skeleton of Dinosaur to an institution, according to Sotheby’s
The official sale price was $ 30.5 million, costs and expenses included. The buyer was not immediately revealed, but the sales house said that the buyer was planning to lend the skeleton to an institution. This is the highest third prize for an auction dinosaur. A skeleton of Stegosaurus, called “Apex”, holds the record after being sold $ 44.6 million last year at Sotheby’s.
Parties of the skeleton were discovered in 1996 near Laramie, in Wyoming, at Bone Cabin’s career, a gold mine for dinosaurs bones.
Specialists have assembled nearly 140 fossil bones with sculpted materials to recreate the skeleton and mounted it so that it is ready to be exposed, says Sotheby’s. It was acquired last year by Fossilogic, a fossil preparation and assembly company based in UTAH.
Measuring more than 2 meters high and almost 3 meters long, it would date from the end of the Jurassic, about 150 million years ago. Ceratosaurus could reach 7.6 meters long, while the Tyrannosaure Rex could reach 12 meters.
Rare meteorite
The Martienne Rouge, Brun and Gray meteorite is around 70 % larger than the second largest Martian fragment found on earth and represents almost 7 % of all the Martian material currently present on our planet, according to Sotheby’s. It measures approximately 375 mm x 279 mm x 152 mm.
It was also a rare discovery. There are only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on earth, said the auction house.
“This Martian meteorite is, by far, the biggest Martian fragment ever discovered,” said Cassandra Hatton, vice-president in charge of science and natural history at Sotheby’s, during an interview before the sale. “So she is more than double what we thought was the biggest Martian fragment.”
It is not known exactly when the meteorite has been projected from the surface of March, but analyzes have shown that it has probably happened in recent years, says Sotheby’s.
Ms. Hatton indicated that a specialized laboratory had examined a small fragment of the vestige of the red planet and had confirmed her Martian origin. Its chemical composition was compared to that of Martian meteorites discovered during the landing of the Viking space probe on March in 1976, she said.
The analysis revealed that it was a “shergottite with micro-gabbroic olivine”, a type of Martian rock formed by the slow cooling of the magma. Its texture is coarse and contains minerals such as pyroxene and olivine, notes Sotheby’s.
Its surface is glassy, probably due to the strong heat which burned it during its fall through the earth’s atmosphere, explained Ms. Hatton. “It was therefore their first clue that it was not just a big rock placed on the ground,” she added.
