A skeleton of Nanotyrannus — a smaller relative of Tyrannosaurus rex — has sold at Sotheby’s in New York for US$47.3 million, more than five times its high estimate, after a 12-minute bidding war among six contenders.
CNN reported that the specimen, named Jodi, is one of only three relatively complete Nanotyrannus skeletons known to science. It had been estimated at $6 million to $9 million.
| Price | US$47.3 million |
| Estimate | $6m – $9m |
| Bidding | 12 minutes, 6 contenders |
| Height / length | 9.6 ft / 19.6 ft |
| Bone elements | 191, with a “virtually complete” skull |
The sale narrowly missed the auction record for a fossil, set in July when the T. rex skeleton Gus went for $50.1 million. Jodi is just over half as long as Gus — which is part of why the price is striking: scarcity, rather than size, appears to have driven it.
The species itself is contested
For decades Jodi’s kind was taken for a juvenile T. rex. Researchers have only recently, in CNN’s phrase, tipped the scales in favour of treating Nanotyrannus as a distinct dinosaur. Hiru News, which attributes its account to the BBC, says the auction came roughly a year after researchers confirmed the separate classification.
Sotheby’s describes Jodi as exceptionally preserved and, on size and bone development, an adult — which is itself an argument against the juvenile-T. rex reading. Missing bones were replaced with custom 3D-printed and sculpted elements.
Found by a rancher, dug by the “Dinosaur Cowboy”
The skeleton was discovered in 2019 by Montana rancher Jodi Pierson, who gave it its name, and excavated by commercial palaeontologist Clayton Phipps, known as the “Dinosaur Cowboy.”
It comes from the Hell Creek Formation, the fossil bed running across Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas where one of the first T. rex skeletons was found in 1902. A short distance from Jodi’s site, Phipps in 2006 unearthed the “Dueling Dinosaurs” — a Triceratops and a smaller tyrannosaur, since identified as a Nanotyrannus — now at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. The third known Nanotyrannus, Jane, is also from Hell Creek and is held at the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Illinois.
Two small divergences between the filings
Hiru gives the height as “about 10 feet (3 m)” where CNN gives 9.6 feet, and gives the pre-sale estimate as “close to $9 million” where CNN gives a range of $6m to $9m — Hiru has taken the top of the range. CNN’s figures are used above. Hiru additionally converts the price to about £35.5 million.
Not reported
The buyer is not identified in either filing, and neither says whether Jodi will go to a museum or into private hands — the question that usually follows a fossil sale of this size. Neither gives the specimen’s age in years beyond the late Cretaceous period, nor says how many of the 191 bone elements were original versus reconstructed.
