The largest piece of Mars on Earth sells for over $5 million at auction.

▲ Rock NWA 16788 sold for just over $5 million. AP Photo

Ap

La Jornada Newspaper, Thursday, July 17, 2025, p. 6

New York. The largest piece of Mars ever discovered on Earth sold yesterday for just over $5 million at an auction of rare geological and archaeological objects in New York. The skeleton of a juvenile dinosaur was also on sale, fetching over $30 million.

The 25-kilogram rock, named NWA 16788, was discovered in Niger's Sahara Desert by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, after it was ejected from the surface of Mars by the impact of a massive asteroid and traveled 225 million kilometers to Earth, according to Sotheby's. The pre-auction estimate was $2 million to $4 million.

The identity of the buyer has not yet been disclosed. The final bid was $4.3 million. Adding various fees and costs, the official asking price was approximately $5.3 million.

The red, brown, and gray meteorite is approximately 70 percent larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7 percent of all Martian material currently on the planet, Sotheby's says. It measures 375 millimeters by 279 millimeters by 152 millimeters.

It was also a rare find. There are only 400 Martian meteorites among the more than 77,000 meteorites officially recognized on Earth, according to the auction house.

"This Martian meteorite is by far the largest piece of Mars we've ever found ," Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby's vice president of science and natural history, noted in an interview before the auction. "It's more than twice the size of what we previously thought was the largest Martian piece ."

It is unknown exactly when the meteorite was ejected from the surface of Mars, but tests have revealed that it likely occurred in recent years, Sotheby's says.

Hatton noted that a specialized laboratory examined a small fragment and confirmed it was from Mars. It was compared to the distinctive chemical composition of Martian meteorites discovered by the Viking spacecraft, which landed on Mars in 1976, he said.

Analysis revealed it to be shergottite (olivine-gabbro) , a type of Martian rock formed by the slow cooling of Martian magma. It has a coarse-grained texture and contains the minerals pyroxene and olivine, according to the auction house.

The meteorite was previously on display at the Italian Space Agency in Rome. Sotheby's did not reveal the owner.

Bidding for the skeleton of the juvenile Ceratosaurus nasicornis dinosaur began with a high pre-bid of $6 million, then escalated to bids of $500,000 and $1 million, before closing at $26 million. The official sale price was $30.5 million, including fees and costs.

Parts of the skeleton were found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, at the Bone Cabin Quarry, a gold mine for dinosaur bones. It measures over 1.8 meters tall and nearly 3 meters long.

Specialists assembled nearly 140 fossil bones with some sculpted materials to recreate the skeleton and mounted it ready for display, Sotheby's said.

The skeleton is believed to be from the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago, Sotheby's said.

Ceratosaurus dinosaurs were short-armed bipeds that resembled Tyrannosaurus rex , but were smaller. They could grow up to 7.6 meters (25 feet), while Tyrannosaurus rex could reach 12 meters (39 feet).