by The largest piece of Mars, which was ever discovered on earth, was sold for more than 5 million dollars at an auction of rare geological and archaeological objects in New York.
The NWA 16788 was discovered by a meteorite hunter in the Niger-Sahara desert in November 2023.
According to Sotheby’s, this extraordinary copy was blown from the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike, with astonishing 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) then traveling to Earth.
The identity of the buyer was not announced immediately. The last offer was 4.3 million US dollars.
The final official bid price, including various fees and costs, reached around $ 5.3 million, which was significantly increased by the estimated sales price before the auction from $ 2 million to $ 4 million.
Before the auction, two requirements of USD 1.9 million and 2 million US dollars were submitted.
The live bid was slower than with many other objects sold, whereby the auctioneer tried to take over more offers and to reduce the supplies of 200,000 to 300,000 US dollars to $ 100,000 after the proposals had reached $ 4 million.
If you add various fees and costs, the official bid price for the Martian meteorite was around 5.3 million US dollars (AP).
The red, brown and gray meteorite is about 70 percent larger than the next largest piece of Mars on Earth and corresponds to almost 7 percent of the martian material currently on this planet on this planet, says Sotheby’s.
It measures almost 15 inches 11 inches 6 inches (375 millimeters of 279 millimeters 152 millimeters).
It was also a rare find. There are only 400 Martian meteorites from more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites on Earth, according to the auction house.
“This Mars meteorite is the biggest piece of Mars that we have ever found through a long shot,” said Cassandra Hatton, deputy chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby’s, in an interview before the auction.
“So it is more than twice the size of what we previously considered the largest piece of Mars.”
It is not clear when the meteorite was blown up by the surface of Mars, but tests showed that this has probably happened in recent years, says Sotheby’s.
Hatton said that a specialized laboratory examined a small piece of the red planetary residue and confirmed that it came from Mars. It was compared with the different chemical composition by Martian meteorites that were discovered during the Viking space probe that landed on Mars in 1976, she said.
The examination showed that it is an “olivin microgabroic Shergotit”, a kind of Mars rock that consists of the slow cooling of Marsmagma. It has a course -kotic texture and contains the minerals pyroxen and olivine, says Sotheby’s.
It also has a glassy surface, probably due to the high heat it burned when it fell through the earth’s atmosphere, said Hatton. “So that was her first indication that this was not just a big stone on the floor,” she said.
A assembled juvenile ceratosaurus -skeleton of the late Jura -Kimmeridgian stage was also under the hammer at the auction (Copyright 2025 the Associated Press.
The meteorite was previously exhibited at the Italian space agency in Rome. Sotheby’s did not disclose the owner.
This was the offer for the Juvenile Ceratosaurus Nasicornis Dinosaur Skeleton began with a high in advance of $ 6 million and then escalated 500,000 US dollars over the last and later $ 1 million before they ended with 26 million US dollar.
The official sales price was 30.5 million US dollars with fees and costs. The original estimate was $ 4 million to $ 6 million.
Parts of the skeleton were found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, Bone Cabin Quarry, a gold mine for dinosaur bones. It is more than 2 meters tall and almost 3 meters long.
Specialists gathered almost 140 fossil bones with some shaped materials to reproduce the skeleton and assembled it so that it is ready to exhibit, says Sotheby’s.
It is believed that the skeleton comes from the late Jura time about 150 million years ago, says Sotheby’s.
Ceratosaurus dinosaurs were used with short poor branches of two, which appear similar to the Tyrannosaurus Rex, but smaller. Ceratosaurus dinosaurs could grow up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) long, while the Tyrannosaurs Rex could be 40 feet (12 meters) long.
The skeleton was taken over last year by Fossilogic, a fossil and assembly company based in Utah.
The auction on Wednesday was part of Sotheby’s Geek week 2025 and contained 122 articles, including other meteorites, fossils and minerals in gem quality.
