largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth<\/a>, the 25 kilogramme rock named NWA 16788 was discovered in the Sahara Desert in Niger by a meteorite hunter in November 2023.<\/p>\nIt was blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike and travelled 225 million kilometers to Earth, according to Sotheby’s.<\/p>\n
The estimated sale price before the auction was $2 million to $4 million. The final bid was $4.3 million. Adding various fees and costs, the official sale price was about $5.3 million, making it the most valuable meteorite ever sold at auction.<\/p>\n
The identity of the buyer was not immediately disclosed. <\/p>\n
Elsewhere during the auction, a rare young dinosaur skeleton sparked a war among six bidders over six minutes, eventually fetching more than $30 million (\u20ac25.8m).<\/p>\n
With a pre-auction estimate of $4 million to $6 million, it is one of only four known Ceratosaurus nasicornis skeletons and the only juvenile skeleton of the species, which resembles the Tyrannosaurus Rex… But smaller.<\/p>\n
The buyer, whose identity was also not immediately disclosed, plans to loan dino skeleton to an institution, according to Sotheby’s. <\/p>\n
It was the third-highest amount paid for a dinosaur at auction. A Stegosaurus skeleton called \u201cApex\u201d holds the record after it was sold for $44.6 million (\u20ac38.4m) last year at Sotheby\u2019s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ADVERTISEMENT ‘Geek Week’ could have a myriad of meanings for a New York gathering of rare objects on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1846,49,48,3432,1845,3430,66,3431,306],"class_list":["post-2549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-auction","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dinosaur","tag-mars","tag-new-york","tag-science","tag-sothebys","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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