Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at the new display of an 11-foot-tall stegosaurus skeleton that’s opening soon at the American Museum of Natural History.
What’s the right place to display an 11-foot-tall, 27-foot-long, 150-million-year-old stegosaurus skeleton that is among the largest and most complete specimens of its kind in the world?
It turns out the first choice is not always the best.
After the hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin bought the skeleton in question for a record-breaking $44.6 million at auction last year, he lent it to the American Museum of Natural History, which is known for its dinosaur and fossil collections.
But the time between Griffin’s acquisition of the huge fossil, nicknamed Apex, and its arrival at the museum was so short, the writer Mark A. Stein reports, staff members had to scramble to find an appropriate spot for it. They had every reason to try.
“To get something this complete, in such good shape, is very rare,” Melissa Posen, the museum’s senior director of exhibition operations, told Stein.
When the public got its first look at Apex and the distinctive rows of bony plates jutting up from its spine, it was at the museum’s Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation. But there hadn’t been enough time for staff members to prepare informational material to accompany the display, or for paleontologists to fully examine its individual fossilized bones.
So early last month the museum took Apex, which dates from the late Jurassic period, out of public view to disassemble it and move it to what seems like a natural location: on the building’s fourth floor, adjacent to the existing dinosaur and fossil halls and Apex’s prehistoric contemporaries like T. rex and titanosaur. The installation will reopen to the public on Oct. 24 and is expected to remain at the museum until late 2028, when Griffin could extend the loan.
Apex has about 80 percent of a stegosaurus’s estimated 320 bones. Jason Cooper, the commercial paleontologist who found it in 2022 in a fossil-rich section of Colorado near the town of — it’s true — Dinosaur, took it apart, painstakingly removing each fossilized bone from the metal framework that gives the display the stegosaurus shape.
The disassembly allowed museum scientists to document each bone’s size, shape and structure. Paleontologists around the world will have access to the information, which could provide basic insights into stegosauri, like how quickly they grew and how long they lived.
Cooper discovered Apex while he and a friend were looking for fossils on property Cooper owns in Moffat County, Colo. The discovery began with a femur.
“We actually found two stegosaurs that day,” Cooper told Stein in an interview. “They were a few hundred meters apart. I initially thought this was the less complete of the two because he was curled up backwards. His back was sticking out, so I thought the whole business end was gone.”
Once they began to dig deeper, he said, “we realized he was curled back on himself. It was a super happy time.”
While Apex is a temporary guest of the natural history museum, dinosaur fans interested in a somewhat less scientifically accurate stegosaurus they could install permanently at their homes might consider what’s on the block at the “Field Station: Dinosaurs” theme park in Leonia, N.J.
As my colleague Dodai Stewart recently reported, the park’s president, Guy Gsell, has decided to close the park after 13 years and is selling off its 31 animatronic inhabitants, including some that growl and roar.
“It’s a little sad,” Gsell said in an interview. “It really kind of feels like I’m putting a pet up for adoption.”
Among the pets he is parting with are an adult triceratops priced at $2,230 and a life-size, “slightly used” and “well loved” T. rex for $2,700. There is also a stegosaurus in the lot. It is over 29 feet long, described as “housebroken” and will cost you $1,260.
Weather
Expect a sunny day with temperatures near 66. Tonight will be mostly clear with a low around 45.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
Suspended for Simhat Torah.
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METROPOLITAN diary
Making Change
Dear Diary:
The sky was an azure blue as I stood on Fifth Avenue. Nearby, the plaza and steps outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art were filled with people enjoying the beautiful afternoon weather.
Having worked through lunch to make a deadline, I was famished, so I stopped at a hot dog cart.
The older woman in front of me was ordering a hot dog and a bottled water.
“That’ll be $11,” the vendor said.
The woman handed him a $20 bill.
“Do you have a single?” he asked.
“No, I don’t,” she said, sounding a bit put out.
“I have a dollar,” I volunteered, offering it to her.
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly,” she said. “I have no way to pay you back.”
“No worries,” I said. “It’s a gift.”
“Well, thank you,” she said, slightly flustered. “You’ve made my day.”
“Happy to help,” I said. “Just pay it forward!”
She walked away, and I ordered a hot dog and a bottled water for myself. I handed the vendor a $20 bill and a single and then stuffed the change in a pocket rather than fumble for my wallet.
It wasn’t until I was on the train home that I pulled out the change to put it in my wallet. The vendor had given me a $10 bill and a single for the one I gave to the woman in front of me.
— Maureen McCormick
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. — E.S.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Francis Mateo and Lauren Hard contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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Ed Shanahan is a rewrite reporter and editor covering breaking news and general assignments on the Metro desk.
The post How Do You Move a Stegosaurus Skeleton? Very Carefully. appeared first on New York Times.
