A rare Nanotyrannus fossil, known as Jodi, is on public display at Sotheby’s in New York ahead of an auction. The 20-foot-long skeleton, which sparked a long-running debate over whether the genus is distinct from Tyrannosaurus rex, is projected to sell for between $6 million and $9 million at auction.
Public Display at Sotheby’s Ahead of October 27 Auction
Walking through the lobby of the Sotheby’s auction house in Manhattan this week, visitors encounter a predator that appears at first glance to be a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex. The skeleton, named Jodi,
stands 6.5 feet tall and stretches nearly 20 feet in length. While it shares the signature sharp teeth and aggressive stance of a T. rex, researchers have confirmed it belongs to a separate, nimbler genus known as Nanotyrannus.
The specimen is one of only three known Nanotyrannus skeletons in existence.
Scientific Distinctions Between Nanotyrannus and T. rex
The 1942 discovery of the Cleveland Skull
—now recognized as the initial Nanotyrannus head and kept at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History—triggered a scientific argument that has spanned decades. For decades paleontologists have argued over whether certain dinosaur fossils belonged to juvenile T. rexes or adults, rather than juveniles. The research challenged long-held assumptions that the mighty King of the Tyrant Lizards
was the sole large predator of the Cretaceous period, some 67 million years ago.
While a T. rex’s teeth were bond-crushingly thick and almost banana-shaped, the Nanotyrannus’ teeth were more slender and almost bladelike, designed to slash the meat off of the animal it was hunting.
Discovery and Excavation in the Hell Creek Formation
The Jodi
specimen was unearthed in 2019 in Montana on family land. Their work on the site was featured in the 2020 Discovery Channel series Dino Hunters.
The Dueling Dinosaurs fossil, which contains a Nanotyrannus and a Triceratops and was discovered in 2006, was found roughly 8 miles (13 kilometers) away from this site. In 2020, the Dueling Dinosaurs were purchased by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, leading scientists Lindsay Zanno and James Napoli to write a Nature paper examining 200 tyrannosaur fossils from across the globe. A team of researchers headed by Professor Lindsay Zanno of North Carolina State University published results last year suggesting that Nanotyrannus is a unique genus separate from Tyrannosaurus.
The Market for Private Dinosaur Collections
The auction of Jodi
highlights the growing, and often contentious, trade in rare dinosaur fossils found on private land. This upcoming sale follows by just three months the $50.1 million sale of a large carnivorous Tyrannosaurus rex fossil called “Gus,” which shattered the previous record for a dinosaur fossil after being valued at a high of $30 million. This topped the $44 million hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin paid in 2024 for Apex, a Stegosaurus. Sitting between those two transactions was another discovery that might offer insight regarding the Jodi case: a juvenile Ceratosaurus fossil that fetched $30.5 million, exceeding its high estimate by more than five times. Famous Hollywood stars Nicolas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio previously made headlines when they went head-to-head during a 2007 auction for a dinosaur skull. Although the Stegosaurus fossil Griffin purchased is currently on exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the location of the Tyrannosaurus rex fossil auctioned three months ago is not publicly known.
The financial implications for the seller also remain complex. A rancher who has retired might find a dinosaur skeleton worth seven figures on his property and suddenly grapple with a tax issue that could alter his Social Security payments for years, depending on whether the profit is classified as a business venture or a fortuitous discovery. By contrast, capital gains and investment earnings remain outside the test, though a multimillion-dollar gain pushes combined income far past the threshold where up to 85% of benefits become taxable.
