Nathan Myhrvold's massive megalodon jaw fossil features eight-inch teeth.
Photo: Courtesy of Modernist cuisine gallery, LLC
The Collectors: Nathan Myhrvold
The highlights of the tech titan’s 100-specimen-strong fossil collection includes a megalodon jaw studded with eight-inch teeth, and a 16-foot Tyrannosaurus rex
Nathan Myhrvold. Photo: Courtesy of Nathan Myhrvold
Former Microsoft chief technology officer and current Intellectual Ventures CEO Nathan Myhrvold collects many things, among them meteorite fragments and vintage photography equipment.
The most extraordinary grouping, however, is his 100-specimen-strong fossil collection, highlights of which include a megalodon jaw studded with eight-inch teeth, a 16-foot Tyrannosaurus rex displayed in his living room, and a 70-million-year-old giant turtle from Morocco.
“One of the things I love about fossils is they stand for humanity’s quest for knowledge about what happened before us,” he explains. “They’re tangible aspects of the natural world.”
Myhrvold has a 70-million-year-old giant turtle from Morocco. Photo: Courtesy of Modernist Cuisine Gallery, LLC
“One of the things I love about fossils is they stand for humanity’s quest for knowledge”
Nathan Myhrvold
Major acquisition: In the late 1990s, as Myhrvold was building his Seattle-area home, he got in contact with paleontologists who ended up securing for him a massive T. rex skeleton, which was cast from actual fossils. “Cast is way more practical to mount,” he says. “For real fossils, you need so much steel armature because the bones are brittle and not that strong. My cast weighs 2,500 pounds, and it would be 100 times heavier if it were real bones.”
A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2024 Late Fall Issue under the headline “The Collectors.” Subscribe to the magazine.
Cover: Nathan Myhrvold's massive megalodon jaw fossil features eight-inch teeth.
Photo: Courtesy of Modernist cuisine gallery, LLC
