With dinosaur fossils fetching millions of dollars at recent auctions, it was perhaps inevitable: A private company said Friday that it had set the date for a public offering that will allow investors to buy shares in a stegosaurus fossil.
It was the latest sign of the booming market for dinosaur fossils, which has raised concerns from academic paleontologists who fear their institutions are being priced out of the market by private collectors, jeopardizing their access to research specimens.
Now a stegosaurus fossil that is still mostly buried in Wyoming is being transformed into an investment vehicle registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Rally, a company that sells shares in a wide variety of collectibles, said Friday that the stegosaurus would go public on Dec. 20, when 200,000 shares will be offered to investors at $68.75 each. The sale could raise up to $13.75 million, according to an S.E.C. filing. The company describes the sale as an initial public offering, but the shares will only be sold through its app or on its website, not on a stock market.
Shareholders will hope for a payout on the dinosaur, nicknamed Steg, once it is sold privately or auctioned to the highest bidder in about a year, according to the company, which sells shares in alternative assets like designer cars, expensive artwork, baseball cards and a copy of the Declaration of Independence.
“We took a risk,” said Rob Petrozzo, Rally’s co-founder and chief product officer. “We feel there is enough upside for investors to see a return.”
The fossil market has been setting records in recent years, the most recent of which was the hedge fund billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin’s winning bid of $44.6 million this summer at the auction of a fossilized stegosaurus. He later arranged to loan the skeleton to the American Museum of Natural History.
The stegosaurus being offered to retail investors was discovered a few months before Griffin’s purchase, but Rally executives sensed a shift in the market. The company said that it paid $2.25 million to reserve rights to the fossil and to fund the remainder of its excavation by Thomas Lindgren, who runs a company that sources specimens for institutions and private collectors.
Lindgren has worked in the fossil industry for over 40 years, including a long tenure as a consulting director of natural history at Bonhams auction house. During an interview, he described finding the stegosaurus remains alongside the bones of prehistoric sauropods and theropods.
“It wasn’t a perfect dinosaur laying there, but it was a pretty complete one,” Lindgren said, saying that his excavation had already unearthed about 67 percent of the bones that scientists would expect on a stegosaurus, and he expects to find more as the excavation continues.
Lindgren has partnered with Rally before, helping the company offer shares in a triceratops skull and a megalodon jaw to investors.
According to the S.E.C. filing, the stegosaurus skeleton measures over 23 feet in length and stands nearly 7 feet tall with most of its spiky tail and most of its back plates preserved. The fossil includes the characteristic dark brown patina typical of fossils found in the Morrison Formation that helped preserve the stegosaurus, which is believed to have roamed the earth about 150 million years ago.
Lindgren and his business partner, Jeffrie Parker, found the dinosaur while excavating Bone Cabin Quarry about 55 miles outside of Laramie, Wyo., under a long-term lease their company has with the landowner. In 1897, scientists from the American Museum of Natural History exhumed the remains of another stegosaurus and other dinosaurs there, including allosaurus and apatosaurus. But museum officials abandoned the site in the early 1900s, when it appeared that the fossil quarry was depleted.
“The museum liked big bones,” said Lindgren, explaining why he’s still finding significant fossils at nearby dig sites. “If they didn’t realize what they had, they didn’t pick it up.”
Lindgren and his colleagues said they would retain 80 percent ownership in the stegosaurus when it is offered to the public. The paleontologist is hoping that increased transparency in the excavation process will entice potential buyers.
Petrozzo said that he hoped that the unusual chance to invest in a dinosaur whose skeleton is still partially buried in the ground would expand on Rally’s typical clientele, which he described as “31-year-olds who have made a little money but aren’t necessarily millionaires.”
“Steg investors might include 18-year-olds who wanted a share, private equity managers or sizable institutions,” Petrozzo said. “You will get a mix of people — a lot of this is driven by popular culture.”
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