Rare dinosaur skeleton sells for $30 million at Sotheby’s ‘Geek Week’ auction

Prices at Sotheby’s Geek Week auction in New York were out of this world on Wednesday, with a meteorite from Mars selling for more than $5 million.  

The largest piece of the Red Planet ever found on Earth was part of a sale of rare geological and archaeological objects.  

But the star of the show was a juvenile dinosaur skeleton that went for more than $30 million, far beyond its original estimate of $4 to $6 million.  

Bidding for the juvenile Ceratosaurus nasicornis dinosaur skeleton started with a high advance bid of $6 million, then escalated with offers $500,000 higher than the last and later $1 million higher than the last before ending at $26 million. The official sale price was $30.5 million with fees and costs.

Parts of the Ceratosaurus skeleton were found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, in the United States. 

Specialists assembled nearly 140 fossil bones with some sculpted materials to recreate the skeleton, which is more than 2 meters tall and 3 meters long.  

Ceratosaurus dinosaurs were bipeds with short arms that appear similar to the Tyrannosaurus rex, but smaller. This one is thought to be from the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago, Sotheby’s says. 

Wednesday’s auction was part of Sotheby’s Geek Week 2025 and featured 122 items, including other meteorites, fossils and gem-quality minerals.