The Nanotyrannus skeleton that Montana rancher Jodi Pierson found on her land in 2019 sold at Sotheby’s New York on Tuesday, October 27, for $47.3 million including fees, after six bidders fought over the 191-bone fossil for more than 12 minutes and pushed it far past its $9 million high estimate.
The skeleton carries her name. Sotheby’s offered it simply as Jodi, and the final price made it the second most valuable dinosaur ever sold at auction, according to the auction house.
Only one fossil has ever done better under the hammer: Gus, a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton that Sotheby’s sold for $50.1 million in July. Jodi came within about $2.8 million of that record.
A rancher’s find in the Hell Creek Formation
Pierson discovered the bones in 2019 in Montana’s Hell Creek Formation, a fossil-rich band of rock that stretches across Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas, as CNN reported after the sale.
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The excavation was done by Clayton Phipps, a commercial paleontologist known as the “Dinosaur Cowboy”. In 2006, a short distance from Jodi’s site, Phipps had unearthed the famous “Dueling Dinosaurs”.
That earlier fossil shows a Triceratops and a smaller tyrannosaur apparently locked in combat. The smaller animal is now identified as a Nanotyrannus, and the pair is at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh.
Hell Creek has a long history with the tyrannosaurs. One of the first T. rex skeletons was found there in 1902, and the species name itself was given based on fossils unearthed in the area.
Six bidders and 12 minutes in the saleroom
Sotheby’s had set a presale estimate of $6 million to $9 million. Bidding ran for more than 12 minutes, and the room broke into applause when the winning bid was confirmed.
The hammer fell at $40.5 million, ARTnews reported. With the auction house’s fees added, the total reached $47.3 million, more than five times the high estimate printed in the catalogue.
The buyer’s identity has not been made public. In a post quoted by The Journal, Sotheby’s said its specialist Jodi Pollack was on the phone with the winning bidder, a coincidence Sotheby’s itself pointed out.
The final figure includes the auction house premiums but excludes applicable taxes and other costs, according to the same report.
191 bones and a virtually complete skull
According to Sotheby’s, Jodi is made up of 191 bone elements and includes a “virtually complete” skull. The skeleton measures about 19.6 feet long and 9.6 feet tall, CNN reported.
That makes it just over half the length of Gus. The animal lived around 67 million years ago, alongside T. rex, and Sotheby’s classifies it as an adult based on its size and bone development.
The missing bones were replaced with custom 3D printed and sculpted pieces. The fossil was also sold with “full rights”, which means it contains no copyrighted elements taken from other dinosaurs.
In practice, that lets the new owner make replicas of the skeleton and sell them to museums or collectors, a detail that adds commercial value beyond the bones themselves.
One of only three skeletons known to science
Jodi is one of only three relatively complete Nanotyrannus skeletons known. Besides the Dueling Dinosaurs specimen, the third, called Jane, is housed at the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Illinois.
Scarcity is the obvious explanation for the price. With just three specimens of this quality, a collector who wanted a Nanotyrannus had no realistic second chance at a comparable skeleton.
The debate that turned a juvenile T. rex into its own genus
For decades, paleontologists argued over whether Nanotyrannus was a separate dinosaur or simply a young T. rex. A study published in Nature last year helped settle the question in favour of a distinct genus.
A later study in Science added evidence from fossilised throat bones, showing that another Nanotyrannus specimen was also close to maturity despite its small size, The Journal reported.
Sotheby’s said Jodi was the first skeleton of its kind offered at auction since that research.
The same fossil failed to sell as “Chomper” in 2023
This is not Jodi’s first trip to the art market. In 2023, under the name “Chomper” and still identified as a juvenile T. rex, London dealer David Aaron offered it for $20 million at Frieze Masters.
It did not sell then. According to Sotheby’s provenance listing cited by ARTnews, the current consignor had acquired the skeleton in 2021. Three years later, with a new name, it fetched more than twice that asking price.
Dinosaur prices keep climbing at auction
Jodi joins a short list of fossils that now trade like trophy art. Christie’s sold the T. rex “Stan” for $31.8 million in 2020, and the Stegosaurus “Apex” brought $44.6 million in 2024.
Last year, a juvenile Ceratosaurus sold at Sotheby’s for $30.5 million against an estimate of only $4 million to $6 million, ARTnews noted.
The pattern is hard to miss. Estimates are set in the single-digit millions, and the final prices land several times higher once wealthy bidders start competing for the few complete skeletons on offer.
Paleontologists worry the bones leave science
Steve Brusatte, professor of paleontology at the University of Edinburgh, wrote in an email to CNN: “We’ve really just found out that Nanotyrannus is real, and now one of the best skeletons is about to be sold to the highest bidder.”
David Hone, of Queen Mary University of London, said he was surprised by the result. “It does feel like this is a bubble of prices on dinosaurs which must burst at some point,” he wrote to CNN.
Hone added that he would be very surprised if the specimen ended up in a public collection available for study. Auction houses argue that private money helps fund the costly work of excavation and preservation.
From a ranch in Montana to a New York saleroom
The full story spans seven years: a find on private land in 2019, a failed sale as Chomper in 2023, a scientific rename, and a $47.3 million result in Manhattan.
We also covered a new dinosaur named from a museum drawer in London, a find with a very different fate.
Whether Jodi ends up on public display now depends entirely on a buyer nobody has named. You can read the auction coverage at CNN.
Should a skeleton this rare go to the highest bidder, or should museums get the first right to buy it?
