Sotheby’s Sells “Jodi” the Nanotyrannus for $47.3 Million, Reigniting the Fossil Ownership Debate
Observer ·
The 67-million-year-old skeleton, shown at Frieze Masters in 2023 as a juvenile T. rex with a $20 million asking price, drew six bidders and now ranks as the second-most-valuable dinosaur ever sold at auction. With fossils increasingly showing up in the international art market, sales like this one raise questions about speculation, scientific rights and the ethics of private ownership.
Another dinosaur went under the hammer at Sotheby's today (Oct. 27) in a dedicated auction. “Jodi,” an extraordinarily rare Nanotyrannus specimen, fetched $47.3 million after a dramatic 12-minute battle among six bidders, ultimately selling to a buyer on the phone. The sale follows Sotheby’s July auction in New York of the Tyrannosaurus rex “Gus,” which set a world record when it achieved $50.13 million, surpassing the $44.6 million paid for the Stegosaurus “Apex” in 2024 by billionaire Ken Griffin . “Jodi” is now the second-most-valuable dinosaur ever sold at auction.
The Nanotyrannus boasts a virtually complete skull comprising an impressive 53 bones, part of an exhibition-ready mounted skeleton standing approximately 9 feet 6 inches tall on its armature and measuring 19.6 feet from nose to tail. Dating to the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous, approximately 67 million years ago, the skeleton is large and developed enough that experts have concluded it belonged to an adult. It has been prepared and mounted freestanding, with 3D-printed and sculpted elements used in its restoration, so the buyer can easily picture this ancient creature as it was in life.
Acquired by the present consignor in 2021, “Jodi” was exhibited at Frieze Masters in 2023 by antiquities and fossil dealer David Aaron . Misidentified at the time as a juvenile T. rex, it was presented under the name “Chomper” with a $20 million asking price. The renaming references the Nanotyrannus’s discovery in 2019 by Jodi Pierson on her privately owned land in the Hell Creek Formation in Garfield County, Montana, near the town of Jordan.
One of the factors driving the resurgence of the dinosaur market is the legal framework in the U.S., where fossils discovered on private land are generally privately owned and can be sold commercially , subject to valid ownership rights and applicable laws. This has made fossils far more accessible here than in many countries, where significant specimens are considered part of the national heritage and their ownership is reserved for the state.
The American framework, however, prompts questions about the balance between private property rights and the preservation of scientific resources . A well-preserved fossil like “Jodi” can convey information about anatomy, evolution, disease, growth and prehistoric ecosystems that holds the potential to shed light on our world today and how it may change. When such fossils disappear into private collections, scientists risk losing access to discoveries that could tell us a great deal.
Commercial collectors and fossil hunters counter that privately funded excavations recover specimens that might otherwise remain undiscovered or be lost to erosion. But “the argument that no paleontology would happen or that dinosaurs wouldn’t be excavated if it wasn’t for the oligarch class buying dinosaurs at auction is a whole load of B.S.,” paleontologist Steve Brusatte said in an October 2026 Apollo article by Anna Brady on the growing commercial fossil market and the possibility that we’re in a fossil bubble.
The category’s growing financial significance has notably exposed it to the risks associated with the broader luxury collectibles market. In Dec. 2024, Christie's London sold a pair of adult and juvenile Allosaurus skeletons and a Stegosaurus for a combined £12.405 million. The specimens were later included in a 2025 asset recovery settlement involving Britain’s National Crime Agency. The buyer was Su Binghai , a Chinese businessman linked to Singapore’s largest money-laundering investigation, who agreed in Nov. 2025 to surrender the dinosaur skeletons and other assets.
Yet private ownership does not necessarily preclude public access or scientific research, nor is the booming market for prehistoric fossils driven exclusively by speculation. Griffin is one of the most prominent buyers in the category, and he is known for making significant acquisitions available to public institutions. After acquiring “Apex,” Griffin arranged a four-year loan to New York’s American Museum of Natural History, where the 150-million-year-old specimen has been on public display since that December. The agreement allows researchers to study and sample the fossil, while Griffin’s philanthropic foundation has funded educational initiatives, a research fellowship and a permanent cast that will remain at the museum after the loan expires. (Griffin previously donated $16.5 million to Chicago’s Field Museum to support its dinosaur exhibitions.)
There is no denying that dinosaurs have become a far more prominent presence in the art world and at art fairs, emerging as a collecting category that attracts buyers well beyond paleontologists, natural history connoisseurs and science geeks. Last year, Phillips included “Cera,” the most complete juvenile Triceratops skeleton ever unearthed , in its modern and contemporary art evening sale, bringing a prehistoric specimen into the fine-art auction environment and putting it in dialogue with contemporary artworks. The unexpected juxtaposition paid off: the skeleton sold for $5.4 million against a $2.5 million low estimate.
Further evidence that dinosaurs are reaching collectors beyond the traditional fossil market came with “Trey,” a Triceratops skeleton dating back more than 66 million years to the Late Cretaceous. It sold for $5.5 million through Joopiter , the online auction platform founded by Pharrell Williams , setting a reported record for an online-only dinosaur sale. Unearthed near Lusk, Wyoming, in 1993 by Lee Campbell and the late Allen Graffham , the skeleton had been exhibited at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center for nearly three decades.
In May 2026, New York contemporary art gallery Amanita presented “Land Before Time: Three Dinosaurs and a Gondola,” bringing three Maiasaura skeletons into dialogue with a sculpture by John Chamberlain . Working with natural history dealers from Tucson-based Granada Gallery, Amanita staged an encounter spanning millions of years, inviting comparisons of physical strength, structure, bodily perception and the expressive possibilities of material and form, while revealing the zoomorphic, corporeal qualities of Chamberlain’s salvaged automobile steel. The exhibition also broadened the gallery’s audience, generated media attention and encouraged a fresh appreciation of both fossils and contemporary art among collectors who might have previously thought of the two as categories with no common thread.
Whether the dinosaur hype will continue remains to be seen. For now, the market’s trajectory is hard to ignore, following an almost relentless upward curve over three decades, even as record-breaking prices are concentrated in a small number of exceptional specimens. The dinosaur auction record has climbed from $8.36 million for “Sue,” the Tyrannosaurus rex sold at Sotheby’s in 1997, to $31.85 million for “Stan” at Christie’s in 2020 and $50.13 million for “Gus” at Sotheby’s earlier this year—a sixfold increase.
A peer-reviewed study published in Geoheritage in 2025 , which analyzed 10,471 fossil auction listings across 115 auction houses between 2010 and 2022, documented €102.36 million in cumulative sales within its dataset, while the number of fossils offered annually outside Catawiki , a European online curated marketplace, rose from 84 to 642. The study also found that dinosaurs, despite accounting for only a fraction of the specimens traded, generated the greatest financial returns. Still, with a significant share of transactions taking place via private dealers and at specialist fairs, situating dinosaurs in the broader market is difficult.,