Montana rancher’s rare dinosaur fossil sells for record $47.3 million at auction

Rising fossil prices are raising concerns that wealthy collectors could take rare specimens away from scientific research. For decades, the Nanotyrannus occupied an uncertain place in the dinosaur world, caught between scientific classification and the shadow of its much more famous relative, Tyrannosaurus rex. Now, a remarkably preserved skeleton has given the disputed dinosaur a new kind of distinction: becoming one of the most valuable dinosaur fossils ever sold.Known as Jodi, the nearly 70%-complete skeleton fetched $47.3 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York, dramatically surpassing its top estimate of $9 million. The sale, reported by The Associated Press, makes Jodi the second-most expensive dinosaur fossil ever sold, narrowly behind the $50.1 million record set by a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton called Gus earlier this year.From Montana ranch to Manhattan auctionJodi’s journey began in 2019, when Montana rancher Jodi Pierson discovered the fossil on her property in the Hell Creek Formation, one of North America’s richest and most extensively studied dinosaur sites. The specimen was subsequently excavated by commercial palaeontologist Clayton Phipps.According to BBC, the s...