A 150-million-year-old fossil of a Stegosaurus which became the most expensive dinosaur fossil ever sold earlier this year, has been put on display at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. The Stegosaurus, nicknamed Apex, will be available for public viewing for the next four years after billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin, who bought the fossil for $44.6 million, generously decided to offer it to the museum authorities. Afterwards, a cast of the specimen will take the fossil’s place.

The impressive specimen was revealed to reporters, photographers and museum employees and is expected to be opened to the public on Sunday (Dec 8).

“It’s one of the dinosaurs that every kid knows how to draw. This is a unique opportunity to have something that simultaneously, I think, really resonates in the public imagination about dinosaurs, but also from a research standpoint, is really a pretty special specimen to understand,” Sean M. Decatur, the museum’s president was quoted as saying by NYT.

“We hope our millions of visitors are as awe-struck as we are by Apex.”

Commenting about lending the fossil, Mr Griffin said Apex “offers a unique window into our planet’s distant past” and that he is grateful millions of visitors and researchers will be able to learn from the magnificent specimen at the museum.

“The joy and awe every child feels colouring a Stegosaurus with their crayons will now be brought to life for the millions of people who have the opportunity to see this epic dinosaur in person.”

This is not the first instance when Mr Griffins, the founder and chief executive of the hedge fund Citadel, has shown interest in the massive reptiles.In 2017, he donated $16.5 to Chicago’s Field Museum to fund an exhibit featuring the largest Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever discovered.

Also Read | US Billionaire Buys Largest Stegosaurus Skeleton For $44.6 Million, Shatters Auction Records

When was Apex found?

Apex was discovered by palaeontologist Jason Cooper on his private land in Colorado in 2022. Measuring 11 feet tall and 27 feet long, scientists stated it was a nearly complete and remarkably preserved fossil, which eventually fetched the record-breaking sum from Mr Griffins.

The skeleton was initially anticipated to fetch somewhere around $6 million but interest from six other participants saw the value balloon to $44.6 million, which smashed the previous record set by a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil, which sold for $$31.8 million in 2020.

What are Stegosaurus?

The Stegosaurus is recognisable by its distinct double row of large, kite-shaped plates along its back plates and spiked tail. It roamed the Earth as a herbivorous dinosaur in the late Jurassic period, around 155-150 million years ago. Despite its impressive armour, Stegosaurus was a relatively small dinosaur, measuring about 30 feet in length and weighing around two to three metric tons.

Fossil records show that dinosaurs evolved during the middle part of the Triassic period.
| Photo Credit: File photo

An international collaboration has been able to identify undigested food remains, plants and prey in the fossilised faeces of dinosaurs, which helped reconstruct the rise of the dinosaurs to become the dominant players in Earth’s ancient ecosystems. The study has been published in the journal Nature.

The analyses of hundreds of samples provide clues about the role dinosaurs played in the ecosystem around 200 million years ago. Fossil records show that dinosaurs evolved during the middle part of the Triassic period (247 to 237 million years ago). However, the domination of dinosaurs in terrestrial ecosystems was not seen until approximately 30 million years later, early in the Jurassic period. Many non-dinosaur tetrapods (four-limbed vertebrates) were displaced during this time, but what caused dinosaurs to dominate the ecosystem has remained in question.

The researchers have investigated this transition by reconstructing food webs using over 500 fossilised remains of digestive material (such as faeces or vomit), known as bromalites, from the Polish Basin, which span the Late Triassic to earliest Jurassic. Analyses of these remains (including 3D imaging of their internal structures to reveal undigested food contents) were compared to the existing fossil record, along with climate and plant data, to estimate the changes in size and abundance of vertebrates during this period.

These data indicate that non-dinosaur tetrapods were displaced by the omnivorous ancestors of early dinosaurs, who evolved to become the first carnivorous and herbivorous dinosaurs towards the end of the Triassic era. At this point, the authors suggest that environmental changes resulted in substantial vegetation changes that paved the way for an expansion of herbivore ecospace and the replacement of herbivores by larger and more diverse herbivore species ingested food of a broader range, even including burnt plants. This, in turn, led to the evolution of larger carnivorous dinosaurs by the beginning of the Jurassic period, and completed the transition to dinosaur domination within the ecosystem.

The analysis sheds light on the emergence of dinosaur dominance within the ecosystem of the Polish Basin. “We suggest that the processes shown by the Polish data may explain global patterns, shedding new light on the environmentally governed emergence of dinosaur dominance and gigantism that endured until the end-Cretaceous mass extinction,” they write. Further research using this method could help to clarify this evolutionary history in other parts of the world.

Washington:

An intense debate surrounding the cosmic rock that killed the dinosaurs has stirred scientists for decades, but a new study has revealed some important — and far-out — data about the impactor’s origin story.

Researchers, whose findings were published Thursday in the journal Science, used an innovative technique to demonstrate that the apocalyptic culprit which slammed into the Earth’s surface 66 million years ago, causing the most recent mass extinction, had formed beyond Jupiter’s orbit.

They also refute the idea that it was a comet.

The new insights into the apparent asteroid that cratered into Chicxulub, in what is present-day Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, could improve the understanding of celestial objects that have struck our planet.

“Now we can, with all this knowledge… say that this asteroid initially formed beyond Jupiter,” Mario Fischer-Godde, lead author of the study and a geochemist at the University of Cologne, told AFP.

The conclusions are particularly notable, given how rarely this type of asteroid collides with Earth.

Such information may well prove useful in assessing future threats, or determining how water arrived on this planet, Fischer-Godde said.

Samples 

The new findings are based on an analysis of sediment samples formed at the period between the Cretaceous and Paleogene eras, the time of the asteroid’s cataclysmic impact.

Researchers measured the isotopes of the element ruthenium, which is not uncommon on asteroids but extremely rare on Earth. So by inspecting the deposits in multiple geological layers that mark the debris from the impact at Chicxulub, they could be sure that the ruthenium studied came “100 per cent from this asteroid.”

“Our lab in Cologne is one of the rare labs that can do these measurements,” and it was the first time such study techniques were used on impact debris layers, Fischer-Godde said.

Ruthenium isotopes can be used to distinguish between the two main groups of asteroids: C-type, or carbonaceous, asteroids that formed in the outer solar system, and S-type silicate asteroids from the inner solar system, nearer the sun.

The study affirms that the asteroid that triggered a mega-earthquake, precipitated a global winter and wiped out the dinosaurs and most other life, was a C-type asteroid that formed beyond Jupiter.

Studies from two decades ago had already made such an assumption but with far less certainty.

The conclusions are striking, because most meteorites — pieces of asteroids that fall to Earth — are S-types, Fischer-Godde pointed out.

Does that mean the Chicxulub impactor formed beyond Jupiter and made a beeline for our planet? Not necessarily.

“We cannot be really sure where the asteroid was kind of hiding just before it impacted on Earth,” Fischer-Godde said, adding that after its formation, it may have made a stopover in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter and where most meteorites originate.

Not a comet 

The study also dismisses the idea that the destructive impactor was a comet, an amalgam of icy rock from the very edge of the solar system. Such a hypothesis was put forward in a much-publicized study in 2021, based on statistical simulations.

Sample analyses now show that the celestial object was far different in composition from a subset of meteorites which are believed to have been comets in the past. It is therefore “unlikely” the impactor in question was a comet, Fischer-Godde said.

As to the wider usefulness of his findings, the geochemist offered two suggestions. 

He believes that more accurately defining the nature of asteroids that have struck Earth since its beginnings some 4.5 billion years ago could help solve the enigma of the origin of our planet’s water.

Scientists believe water may have been brought to Earth by asteroids, likely of the C-type like the one that struck 66 million years ago, even though they are less frequent.

Studying past asteroids also allows humanity to prepare for the future, Fischer-Godde said.

“If we find that earlier mass extinction events could also be related to C-type asteroid impacts, then… if there’s ever going to be a C-type asteroid on an Earth-crossing orbit, we have to be very careful,” he said, “because it might be the last one we witness.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)