SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Ari, I've got a fun dinosaur fact for you.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
I love a fun fact. Hit it.
DETROW: Did you know the stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex were never alive at the same time?
SHAPIRO: I had no idea. In my playroom as a child, they both frolicked and cavorted together.
DETROW: I had the same experience. But turns out the stegosaurus is much older, so much older it had been extinct for 80 million years by the time the T.rex started waving its tiny arms. And that is longer than the time separating us humans from those T.rexes.
SHAPIRO: That is shocking. Well, I guess that makes the quality of the stegosaurus fossil just auctioned off at Sotheby's this morning even more impressive.
DETROW: I guess so.
SHAPIRO: Apex the stegosaurus is about 11 feet tall and 27 feet long from tip to tail. And so how much do you think this special antique got?
DETROW: I'm going to say millions and millions of dollars.
SHAPIRO: Yeah, you're going to look at the script in front of you...
DETROW: (Laughter).
SHAPIRO: ...And see that it's exactly $44.6 million. One buyer paid that much for Apex the stegosaurus this morning, and not everyone's happy about that.
CARY WOODRUFF: I don't think fossils should be allowed to be auctioned.
DETROW: That is paleontologist Cary Woodruff, among the scientists who viewed the specimen at the dig site in Colorado where it was discovered. NPR's Andrew Mambo talked with Woodruff last month ahead of the auction. And Woodruff is also a curator at the Phillip & Patricia Frost Museum of Science in Miami.
SHAPIRO: He says, because of the way fossils in America are classified, opening the possibility of private ownership of fossils means not every scientist will be able to study it, which means its research value diminishes.
WOODRUFF: I hate to say it - it doesn't matter if someone wants to have this fossil. You know, it's the fact that even if they own the coolest, bestest fossil that will ever be found, it essentially doesn't scientifically exist.
DETROW: At the same time, Woodruff acknowledges science's historic dependence on wealthy benefactors to finance a lot of this work.
WOODRUFF: Pick any historic museum, they started from private collections. Of course, historically, these were, you know, quite often old white guys with money who had their own collections, and then they wanted to donate them to start these museums. So, you know, the foundations of most museum collections are literally built upon privately owned objects that were then donated.
SHAPIRO: The identity of the winning bidder is not yet public. But in a statement to NPR last week, Sotheby's said, quote, "losing scientifically important fossils to a private collection is a concern often mentioned, but in our experience, we have yet to see it materialize." Unquote. Sotheby's added that private collectors often donate rare items to museums.
DETROW: And while the fossil has been around a long time, the bidding only lasted about 15 minutes and it sold for a price that was 11 times higher than anticipated. Ari, I'm just going to say if I could buy a dinosaur, I would.
SHAPIRO: I'd buy a T.rex, not a stegosaurus.
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