Largest piece of Mars on Earth sells for over $5m at New York auction | Mars

The largest piece of March never found on Earth was sold for just over $ 5 million during an auction of rare geological and archaeological objects in New York on Wednesday, while a juvenile dinosaur skeleton cost more than $ 30 million.

The rock of 54 pounds (25 kg) named NWA 16788 was discovered in the Sahara desert in Niger by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, after being destroyed from the surface of March by a massive asteroid strike and traveling 140 m of Miles (225 meters) of the earth, according to Sotheby’s. The estimated sale price before the auction was $ 2 million to $ 4 million.

The buyer’s identity was not immediately disclosed. The final offer was $ 4.3 million. Adding various costs and costs, the official price of the offer was around $ 5.3 million.

Two advanced offers of $ 1.9 million and $ 2 million were submitted. Live auctions have gone more slowly than for many other objects sold, the auctioneer trying to coax more offers and reduce $ 200,000 auction intervals to $ 300,000 to $ 100,000 after the proposals reached $ 4 million.

The red, brown and gray meteorite is around 70% larger than the largest piece of March found on earth and represents almost 7% of all Martian materials currently on this planet, says Sotheby’s. It measures almost 15 inches per 11 inches per 6 inches (375 mm by 279 mm by 152 mm).

It was also a rare discovery. There are only 400 Martian meteorites on more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on land, indicates the auction house.

“This Martian meteorite is the biggest piece in March that we have never found in the long term,” said Cassandra Hatton, vice-president of science and natural history at Sotheby’s, in an interview before the auction. “It is therefore more than double the size of what we thought before was the largest piece in March.”

We don’t know exactly when the meteorite has been denounced from the surface of March, but the tests have shown that it has probably happened in recent years, says Sotheby’s.

Hatton said that a specialized laboratory had examined a small piece from the rest of the red planet and confirmed that he came from March. It was compared to the distinct chemical composition of Martian meteorites discovered during the Viking spacecraft which landed in March in 1976, she said.

The examination revealed that it was an “olivine-microgabbroic shergottite”, a type of Martian rock formed from the slow cooling of the Martian magma. It has a coarse texture and contains pyroxen and Olivine minerals, known as Sotheby’s.

It also has a glass surface, probably due to the high heat that burned it when it fell into the earth’s atmosphere, Hatton said. “It was therefore their first index that it was not only a big rock on the ground,” she said.

The meteorite was previously exhibited at the Italian space agency in Rome. Sotheby’s has not disclosed the owner.

Auction for the juvenile Ceratosaurus nasicornis Dinosaur Skeleton began with an high -advance offer of $ 6 million, then increased with $ 500,000 more offers than the last and $ 1 million upper dollars at the last before the end of $ 26 million. The official sale price was $ 30.5 million with costs and fees. The initial estimate was $ 4 million to $ 6 million.

Parts of the skeleton were found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, in Bone Cabin Quarry, a gold mine for dinosaurs bones. It measures more than 6 feet (2 meters) in height and almost 11 feet long.

Specialists have assembled nearly 140 fossil bones with carved materials to recreate the skeleton and mounted it to be ready to exhibit, says Sotheby’s.

The skeleton is supposed to come from the period of the Upper Jurassic, about 150 million years ago, says Sotheby’s.

Ceratosaurus dinosaurs were two -ways with short arms that seem similar to the Tyrannosaurus rex, but smaller. Ceratosaurus dinosaurs could reach 25 feet long, while Tyrannosaurs Rex could measure 40 feet long.

The skeleton was acquired last year by Fossillogic, a fossil preparation and assembly company based in Utah.

Wednesday’s auction was part of Sotheby’s Geek 2025 week and included 122 articles, including other Gemm quality meteorites, fossils and minerals.