Dinosaur hunter stumbles upon a million dollar find

The first stegosaurus skeleton to go under the hammer will fetch millions of dollars in New York. But the extraordinary discovery was made by chance, thousands of miles to the west during a man’s birthday walk, writes Stephen Smith.

It’s every child’s dream to wander into the garden and come face-to-face with a real-life dinosaur, ideally one of the less scary ones that eat a reasonable plant-based diet.

For most of us, a dream is everything, but not for a man named Jason Cooper.

He has encountered dinosaurs in his backyard not once, but on many different occasions.

In fact, when he goes for a walk around his property in the American Southwest, he is more likely than not to encounter a creature from prehistoric times.

But even so, he may never come across a specimen like the one he came across a few years ago, an animal so massive that if it appeared on a London street it would be the size of an old bus double decker Routemaster. – although you’ll want to be careful which one you ride.

It was a large stegosaurus, in excellent condition for a beast that has spent the last 150 million years underground.

It is almost 11.5 feet long (3.5 m) and fully 27 feet from the top of its head to the tip of its scaly tail.

Cooper has named it “Apex” because its formidable dimensions would have made it a dominant animal in its environment.

With the help of some friends, he cleaned it up and put it back together.

And if you’ve always had the fantasy of bumping into a dinosaur on your lawn, you can make it a reality — if you can lay your hands on $4-6 million.

Apex is set to become the first stegosaurus to be auctioned.

The bidding is expected to be quick. Dinosaur fossils have become desirable trophies, coveted by successful tech entrepreneurs and Hollywood stars.

This has caused much concern among academic paleontologists, who claim that allowing them to end up in private hands hinders scientific research and denies the public the opportunity to appreciate them.

Nicolas Cage reportedly bought a tyrannosaurus skull for more than £185,000 in 2007 after a bidding war with Leonardo DiCaprio, although he returned it after it turned out to be stolen.

Mr. Cooper is a professional fossil hunter who has turned his childhood dream of discovering dinosaurs into reality with the pragmatism of a theatergoer who decides to rent near Broadway.

He and his family live in Colorado atop a geologic feature known as the Morrison Formation, a stretch of sedimentary rock dating to the Jurassic period that covers 600,000 square miles of the western United States.

The Morrison Formation is to dinosaurs what California was to gold nuggets in the mid-19th century.

And for the romantically minded, Mr. Cooper and others like him are explorers of the last American frontier, the unknown land beneath their muddy boots.

He owns a little less than 100 hectares, and in the last dozen years he has taken out 10 dinos from them. And to hear him tell it, getting his biggest find to date was literally a walk in the park.

It was his 45th birthday and when his friend asked him what he wanted, he declared that the best present would be a new dinosaur and so off they went. And as they walked up the side of a mountain, Mr. Cooper noticed a thigh bone sticking out of the rock wall.

“We looked around. My friend found some beads. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is turning out to be a really great birthday!’

The face of clay, silt, and sand rock that Cooper pointed out at Apex is like a cross section of all the deposits that have been laid down in that part of the world over time.

“I saw a tail spike sticking out and some big plates on the back. I could tell it was still wrapped.”

After the fossil hunters had recorded as much information as they could about where Apex was found, its bones were attached to protective “jackets” made of plaster and burlap and lifted into a trailer.

Back at Cooper’s dino shop, work began on cleaning and reassembling the stegosaurus, with equipment including sand blasters, pneumatic chisels and powerful microscopes.

Fossilization meant that the bones were encased in rock; this was carefully removed, to expose the skeleton of the animal.

“Apex is 70% complete, which is incredible for a dinosaur, especially a stegosaurus,” Cooper said.

To put that in context, ideas of “completeness” in the fossil world are about as spiky as a stegosaur’s tail, according to Sotheby’s Cassandra Hatton, who is overseeing the sale.

“No one has ever found 100% of a dinosaur. “A stegosaurus as good as this is hard to find, she says. “I think it’s going to be incredibly important.”

Apex did not appear to be damaged in combat with other creatures. The only indication of wear and tear was that its lower vertebrae were fused to the pelvis, an effect of arthritis, suggesting that the stegosaurus had a long life before an eternity on land.

It will now be carefully disassembled again, before moving to long, stable land from Cooper’s spread to Sotheby’s Manhattan trading rooms, where the Apex will be reassembled and displayed to the public and potential buyers at July.

It’s been 200 years since natural historians began classifying dinosaurs, and their descendants oppose the sale of Apex on this anniversary.

Steve Brusatte, professor of palaeontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh, who is originally from the US, says that stegosaurus specimens are very rare and, if they are genuine, it belongs in a museum.

“It’s a great shame when a fossil like this, which can educate and pique the curiosity of so many people, just disappears into an oligarch’s mansion.”

In the UK, fossil enthusiasts are generally allowed to keep smaller, common varieties, such as shells and corals, but must report any significant finds.

There are no such restrictions in the US, where anyone who digs up a dinosaur on their property has the right to do with it as they please, and that includes making a nice living out of it.

Jason Cooper defends the sale of the stegosaurus he found, arguing that he and his critics are essentially on the same page.

“The collectors and philanthropists who buy these dinosaurs can enjoy them at home for a few years, but then they get the fossils with their name on them and give them to institutions,” he tells the BBC. Cooper says he donated himself to public collections.

When the hammer goes up for sale, Cooper will return to dinosaur land, looking for more fossils, some of which he will donate to public collections. Of course, there aren’t exactly a few where he comes from. He compares finding dinosaurs to another childhood dream that sounds almost as impossible. “It’s like looking for gold coins, except you know where the king’s counting house was.”

Stephen Smith is a writer and broadcaster