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Stegosaurus to be Auctioned in New York. Its Remains Show Signs of Arthritis

150-million-year-old fossil of Stegosaurus specimen is on display at Sotheby's in New York on July 10, 2024. (Photo by Charly TRIBALLEAU / AFP)
150-million-year-old fossil of Stegosaurus specimen is on display at Sotheby's in New York on July 10, 2024. (Photo by Charly TRIBALLEAU / AFP)
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Stegosaurus to be Auctioned in New York. Its Remains Show Signs of Arthritis

150-million-year-old fossil of Stegosaurus specimen is on display at Sotheby's in New York on July 10, 2024. (Photo by Charly TRIBALLEAU / AFP)
150-million-year-old fossil of Stegosaurus specimen is on display at Sotheby's in New York on July 10, 2024. (Photo by Charly TRIBALLEAU / AFP)

The nearly complete fossilized remains of a 161-million-year-old stegosaurus discovered in Colorado in 2022 will be auctioned by Sotheby's in New York next week, auction house officials said.
The dinosaur that Sotheby's calls Apex stands 11 feet (3.3 meters) tall and measures 27 feet (8.2 meters) nose to tail, according to Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby's global head of science and popular culture.
The stegosaurus, with its distinctive pointy dorsal plates, is one of the world's most recognizable dinosaurs, The Associated Press reported.
Apex, which Hatton called “a coloring book dinosaur," was discovered in May 2022 on private land near the town of Dinosaur, Colorado. The excavation was completed in October 2023, Sotheby's said.
Though experts believe stegosauruses used their fearsome tail spikes to fight, this specimen shows no signs of combat, Sotheby's said. The fossil does show evidence of arthritis, suggesting that Apex lived to an advanced age.
Hatton said Apex was found “with the tail curled up underneath the body, which is a common death pose for animals.”
The dinosaur will be auctioned on July 17 as part of Sotheby's “Geek Week” series.
Sotheby's is estimating that it will sell for $4 million to $6 million, but that's just an educated guess.
“This is an incredibly rare animal,” Hatton said. “A stegosaurus of this caliber has never sold at auction before, so we will find out what it is actually worth.”

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Scores of Homes Razed, One Dead in Australian Bushfires

Smoke rises from a burning forest on a hillside behind a home near Longwood as bushfires continue to burn under severe fire weather conditions in Longwood, Victoria, Australia, January 9, 2026. AAP/Michael Currie via REUTERS
Smoke rises from a burning forest on a hillside behind a home near Longwood as bushfires continue to burn under severe fire weather conditions in Longwood, Victoria, Australia, January 9, 2026. AAP/Michael Currie via REUTERS
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Scores of Homes Razed, One Dead in Australian Bushfires

Smoke rises from a burning forest on a hillside behind a home near Longwood as bushfires continue to burn under severe fire weather conditions in Longwood, Victoria, Australia, January 9, 2026. AAP/Michael Currie via REUTERS
Smoke rises from a burning forest on a hillside behind a home near Longwood as bushfires continue to burn under severe fire weather conditions in Longwood, Victoria, Australia, January 9, 2026. AAP/Michael Currie via REUTERS

Bushfires have razed hundreds of buildings across southeast Australia, authorities said Sunday, as they confirmed the first death from the disaster.

Temperatures soared past 40C as a heatwave blanketed the state of Victoria, sparking dozens of blazes that ripped through more than 300,000 hectares (740,000 acres) combined.

Fire crews tallied the damage as conditions eased on Sunday. A day earlier, authorities had declared a state of disaster.

Emergency Management Commissioner Tim Wiebusch said over 300 buildings had burned to the ground, a figure that includes sheds and other structures on rural properties, AFP reported.

More than 70 houses had been destroyed, he said, alongside huge swathes of farming land and native forest.

"We're starting to see some of our conditions ease," he told reporters.

"And that means firefighters are able to start getting on top of some of the fires that we still have in our landscape."

Police said one person had died in a bushfire near the town of Longwood, about two hours' drive north of state capital Melbourne.

"This really takes all the wind out of our sails," said Chris Hardman from Forest Fire Management Victoria.

"We really feel for the local community there and the family, friends and loved ones of the person that is deceased," he told national broadcaster ABC.

Photos taken this week showed the night sky glowing orange as the fire near Longwood tore through bushland.

"There were embers falling everywhere. It was terrifying," cattle farmer Scott Purcell told ABC.

Another bushfire near the small town of Walwa crackled with lightning as it radiated enough heat to form a localized thunderstorm.

Hundreds of firefighters from across Australia have been called in to help.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he was talking with Canada and the United States for possible extra assistance.

Millions have this week sweltered through a heatwave blanketing much of Australia.

High temperatures and dry winds combined to form some of the most dangerous bushfire conditions since the "Black Summer" blazes.

The Black Summer bushfires raged across Australia's eastern seaboard from late 2019 to early 2020, razing millions of hectares, destroying thousands of homes and blanketing cities in noxious smoke.

Australia's climate has warmed by an average of 1.51C since 1910, researchers have found, fueling increasingly frequent extreme weather patterns over both land and sea.

Australia remains one of the world's largest producers and exporters of gas and coal, two key fossil fuels blamed for global heating.

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New York's Chrysler Building, an Art Deco Jewel, Seeks New Owner

Pedestrians and cars move along Lexington Avenue in the Manhattan borough of New York City on December 16, 2025. (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP)
Pedestrians and cars move along Lexington Avenue in the Manhattan borough of New York City on December 16, 2025. (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP)
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New York's Chrysler Building, an Art Deco Jewel, Seeks New Owner

Pedestrians and cars move along Lexington Avenue in the Manhattan borough of New York City on December 16, 2025. (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP)
Pedestrians and cars move along Lexington Avenue in the Manhattan borough of New York City on December 16, 2025. (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP)

The future of the Chrysler Building, a unique monument to art deco architecture on the Manhattan skyline, remains in limbo as it awaits a possible sale.

The building, affixed with gargoyles, stainless steel design nods to early Chrysler vehicles and a celebrated crown and needle top, has been put up for sale after a New York judge expropriated the property in September 2024 from prior leaseholders who were in arrears.

The famed skyscraper, which began hosting tenants in April 1930 and was once the world's tallest building, continues to draw tourists to its blue-chip address of 405 Lexington Avenue in the heart of Manhattan.

But real estate insiders say the property is badly in need of remodeling, with aging office spaces, tiny windows, fickle elevators and a pesky rodent population among its ills.

"The beautiful (Chrysler Building) has lots of technical issues but it's unclear what the best use for the building is," said Ruth Colp-Haber, a partner at Wharton Property Advisors, who believes costly investment will be needed to update the structure.

"Everything's on hold there until they figure out who's the owner and what's his game plan," she said. "They are not showing spaces."

The Chrysler Building was first envisioned in the roaring 1920s, prior to the 1929 Wall Street crash, and completed in just two years.

It opened with fanfare and hosted an observation deck until 1945. The building stood as the tallest structure in the world prior to the completion of the Empire State Building in 1931.

The land on which the building sits has been owned since 1902 by the Cooper Union, a private college that specializes in art, architecture and engineering.

The school's most recent tenant, a consortium of real estate firm RFR and Austrian firm Signa, had reached an agreement in 2019 to buy the building for $151 million with a promise of $250 million in upgrades.

But Signa filed for insolvency in 2023 and RFR stopped paying rent in May 2024, according to legal documents reviewed by AFP, with the latter owing $21 million when the property was expropriated.

Cooper Union leaders have said the Chrysler Building's travails will not result in higher tuition rates or fewer scholarships.

"We have built important reserves and surpluses over the last seven years," Cooper Union interim president Malcolm King said in a message to employees and students, adding that they had "planned for a range of scenarios, including this one."

Current tenants of the building include prestigious law firms, investment groups and creative agencies.

New York's commercial real estate industry has partially recovered from the pandemic and early post-pandemic period when companies were slow to return to the office.

But the Chrysler Building faces tough competition from newer buildings, like the nearby One Vanderbilt Avenue or the gleaming Hudson Yards structures.

Further complicating the situation is the structure's 1978 designation as a New York City landmark, a distinction that means significant changes must be approved by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Exactly what will happen to the building remains clouded in mystery.

AFP queries to the Cooper Union, the landmark commission and leading real estate brokers went unanswered.

In any case, "it is extraordinarily rare for the commission to approve the demolition of an individual landmark," said an expert who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

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Ankara City Hall Says Water Cuts Due to 'Record Drought'

Dam reservoir levels have dropped to 1.12 per cent and taps are being shut off for several hours a day in certain districts on a rotating schedule in Ankara. PHOTO: AFP
Dam reservoir levels have dropped to 1.12 per cent and taps are being shut off for several hours a day in certain districts on a rotating schedule in Ankara. PHOTO: AFP
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Ankara City Hall Says Water Cuts Due to 'Record Drought'

Dam reservoir levels have dropped to 1.12 per cent and taps are being shut off for several hours a day in certain districts on a rotating schedule in Ankara. PHOTO: AFP
Dam reservoir levels have dropped to 1.12 per cent and taps are being shut off for several hours a day in certain districts on a rotating schedule in Ankara. PHOTO: AFP

Water cuts for the past several weeks in Türkiye capital were due to the worst drought in 50 years and an exploding population, a municipal official told AFP, rejecting accusations of mismanagement.

Dam reservoir levels have dropped to 1.12 percent and taps are being shut off for several hours a day in certain districts on a rotating schedule in Ankara, forcing many residents to line up at public fountains to fill pitchers, reported AFP.

"2025 was a record year in terms of drought. The amount of water feeding the dams fell to historically low levels, to 182 million cubic meters in 2025, compared with 400 to 600 million cubic meters in previous years. This is the driest period in the last 50 years,” said Memduh Akcay, director general of the Ankara municipal water authority.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called the Ankara municipal authorities, led by the main opposition party, "incompetent."

Rejecting this criticism, the city hall says Ankara is suffering from the effects of climate change and a growing population, which has doubled since the 1990s to nearly six million inhabitants.

"In addition to reduced precipitation, the irregularity of rainfall patterns, the decline in snowfall, and the rapid conversion of precipitation into runoff (due to urbanization) prevent the dams from refilling effectively," Akcay said.

A new pumping system drawing water from below the required level in dams will ensure no water cuts this weekend, Ankara’s city hall said, but added that the problem would persist in the absence of sufficient rainfall.

Much of Türkiye experienced a historic drought in 2025. The municipality of Izmir, the country’s third-largest city on the Aegean coast, has imposed daily water cuts since last summer.