By Carol Tannenhauser

Children of all ages rejoice! A new dinosaur is temporarily joining the world-renowned collection at the American Museum of Natural History — and it’s open for public viewing this Sunday, December 8.

The new dinosaur, known as “Apex,” is a Stegosaurus — believed to be the largest ever found. It is 11.5 feet tall, 27 feet long, and 80 percent complete, which means that most of the fossils comprising it are real.

“It was remarkably well preserved for the past 150 million years,” said Sean M. Decatur, president of the Museum.

Apex is on a special four-year loan to the AMNH from Kenneth C. Griffin, a financier and philanthropist, who bought it at auction from Sotheby’s for $45 million in July of 2024, according to a museum source. It was discovered in 2022 by a commercial paleontologist named Jason Cooper, near the town of Dinosaur, Colorado. “After the specimen was excavated, prepared, and articulated, it was mounted in a defensive pose, with its multi-spiked tail in the air,” a press release explained.

Before Apex joins its comrades on the Museum’s famed fourth floor next fall, it will be on view in the alcove directly to the right of the entrance to the Gilder Center, on Columbus Avenue and West 79th Street.

In addition to the awe it inspires, Apex, which is believed to be one of the few Stegosaurus specimens to have lived to an advanced age, will be a source of important scientific data for research, said Roger Benson, the museum’s Macaulay Curator of Paleontology.

“Stegosaurus is one of the top dinosaurs known by the general public,” Benson added, “but, scientifically, we have much more to learn.”

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