The 11ft tall and 20ft long fossil, nicknamed Apex, could fetch up to $6m as it’s celebrated as ‘one of the best unearthed’

The largest and most complete Stegosaurus fossil ever found is expected to fetch up to $6m (£4.7m) when it is sold as the star lot in Sotheby’s “geek week” auction this summer.

At 11ft (3.4 metres) tall and more than 20ft long the “virtually complete” fossil, which has been nicknamed “Apex”, is more than 30% larger than “Sophie”, the previously most intact stegosaurus specimen which was on display in London’s Natural History Museum.

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© Photograph: Matthew Sherman/Sotheby’s

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© Photograph: Matthew Sherman/Sotheby’s

More Than 1000 Fossils, Including Rare Dinosaurs, Given to Brazil's National Museum Following Fire. (Smithsonian Magazine.) The massive donation was made by Burkhard Pohl, a Swiss-German collector, as the museum works to replenish its collections after a devastating blaze in September 2018.

"We felt it was the right thing to do to help rebuild a comprehensive collection of Brazilian fossils,' Pohl tells the Art Newspaper's Gabriella Angeleti. "We hope that this initiative will inspire other collectors to follow suit and join this important effort. I strongly believe that a collection is a living organism that must constantly evolve—a collection locked away in a basement is a dead collection."

Carnivorous predator Radnorscolex latus existed 425m years ago and caught prey with its retractable throat

An ancient worm unearthed in Herefordshire was a carnivorous predator that shoved its throat out to catch and eat prey, according to scientists.

The creature, named Radnorscolex latus, was found at a disused Victorian quarry site in the village of Leintwardine, near the Welsh border.

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© Photograph: Richie Howard/Luke Parry/National History Museum/PA

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© Photograph: Richie Howard/Luke Parry/National History Museum/PA

A new exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London includes ‘tragic’ tales of species wiped out from their natural habitats

Douglas Russell, a senior curator at London’s Natural History Museum, was examining a collection of nests gathered on the island of Guam when he made an unsettling discovery.

“The nests had been picked up more than 100 years ago, and I was curating them with the aim of adding them to the museum’s main collection. They turned out to be one of the most tragic, saddest accumulations of objects I’ve ever had to deal with,” Russell told the Observer last week.

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© Photograph: Alamy

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© Photograph: Alamy

He arranged for artists to have access to astronauts, launchpads and more. “Their imaginations enable them to venture beyond a scientific explanation,” he once said.