Sotheby’s has sold the largest Martian meteorite ever recovered on Earth for a record $5.3 million, including premiums and taxes, after spirited bidding at its Geek Week natural-history auction in New York on 16 July. The 54-pound (24.7-kilogram) specimen, catalogued as NWA 16788 and initially valued at $2 million to $4 million, drew a hammer price of $4.3 million, making it the most expensive meteorite ever auctioned. The rock was found in November 2023 in Niger’s Agadez region, having travelled roughly 225 million kilometres (140 million miles) to Earth after being blasted from Mars by an asteroid impact. Measuring nearly 38 by 28 centimetres and representing almost 7 percent of all known Martian material on the planet, the meteorite headlined a sale that also featured a juvenile Ceratosaurus skeleton, which fetched $30.5 million—the third-highest price on record for a dinosaur fossil.