Forget about Porsches and Picassos. For a certain class of deep-pocketed bigshot, such as Hollywood stars, hedge fund titans and tech moguls, dinosaur bones are the status item of choice

At auction, the ancient fossilized remnants have sped past the prices of many Old Masters paintings.

This past July, hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin raised eyebrows by ponying up $44.6 million for a 150 million-year-old Stegosaurus – which had a guide price of only $6 million.

Known as “Apex,” the 254-bone skeleton, roughly the size of a bus, is the priciest fossil ever purchased. Scored at Sotheby’s, it’s drawing attention from the viewing public as it is on loan to the American Museum of Natural History in Central Park.

As to what draws major guys to the now-extinct major beasts, a paleontologist, who spoke anonymously, believes it’s largely about bragging rights and sheer awesomeness: “You can own a 3-foot-by-3-foot painting or have a giant skull that ate prey in one bite. Which would you want? Plus, the auctions have made dinosaurs desirable by marketing them and publicizing them. Dinosaurs will always be cool, but big prices created a big boom.”

Indeed, thirsty collectors have been known to go after one another — sort of like a pair of face-biting Tyrannosaurus Rexes squaring off in the ancient wilds that became Montana — in order to get a coveted piece that may never again see the light of an auction house salesroom. Such was the case, in 2007, when Nicolas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio both wanted the same Tyrannosaurus Bataar skull.

In the Beverly Hills gallery I.M. Chait, the two film stars were not acting when they went toe to toe trying to snag the 67 million-year-old piece. It wound up going for $276,000, with Cage bringing in the winning bid. However, seven years later, he wound up returning the head to Mongolia after finding out that it had been smuggled out of the country illegally.

Most dino bones have been found in North America, Argentina and China, but many are being bought up and shipped to the Middle East — where oil-rich dignitaries are opening a natural history museum in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, later this year.

With the museum sucking up as many dinos as it can snag, at least one paleontologist is concerned. “It’s massive, and they’re buying everything,” he told The Post. “I’m glad that the dinosaurs are going to end up in a museum.

“But they’re leaving North America and will be hard for paleontologists to study. One thing I know is [the Abu Dhabi investors are] sitting on a lot of money.”

Nevertheless, they will not be corralling Apex at any price. At the time of the purchase, Griffin said, “Apex was born in America and is going to stay in America!”

Other big-time dino buyers include an American surgeon with a skull collection, a Southern California man with an Ichthyosaurus in his bedroom, and a real estate developer from China who was recently on the trail for a $3 million Stegosaurus.

Many of these buyers prefer to lie low with their fossilized bones — partly due to controversy around affluent individuals privately owning dinosaur bones, leading to jacked-up prices, thus making it difficult for museums to put together their own collections.

Others proudly show them off. Dan O’Dowd, founder of Green Hills Software, which makes no-fail software for nuclear bombers and fighter jets, has no shortage of prized possessions, of which the crown jewel is a T. Rex named Samson, which roamed the earth more than 70 million years ago and weighed 7.5 tons at the time. He mostly keeps it in a warehouse near Santa Barbara.

“I don’t have room to put it up,” he told The Post of the 40-foot-long skeleton. “I would like to put it in the lobby of my office building. But I’d have to take down the ceiling and move walls and do all kinds of things to get it to fit. But we’ve had it in museums” — including the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. “It takes days for a whole crew of people to put it together.”

But don’t feel sorry for O’Dowd keeping his dino finds out of easy reach. A piece of Samson gets pride of place in his office: “I have a T. Rex skull in the lobby of my building” — teeth bared, it is said to be the most complete skull of its kind ever recovered — “just the big old skull. We have it in Plexiglas, so it doesn’t get damaged, and people can take photos in front of it. It makes a fun statement that we are not all business every day.”

Asked what makes wealthy guys obsessed with dinosaurs, O’Dowd replied, “They’re powerful. And they were the rulers of the land.”

Though O’Dowd is passionate about his multimillion-year-old finds, he got into the game surprisingly spontaneously. In the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis, a bank got stuck with Samson and wanted to sell it for cash via an auction. “Some guy had put up his T. Rex as collateral and it did not meet the reserve price at the auction,” recalled O’Dowd, remembering the reserve being in the $6 million range. “They wanted cash. I made a bid and bought a dinosaur.”

Although he lost to Cage at one auction, DiCaprio did manage to get his hands on another 65 million-year-old dino head, which he then offloaded to Russell Crowe. Apparently they were both drunk at Leo’s house when Crowe bought it for $35,000, which proved a savvy move as he sold it in 2018 for $65,000.

Investors believe their ancient bones will be a savvy investment for the future, too.

“Ken Griffin blew the doors off of the pricing,” said O’Dowd, who believes his initial investment has escalated considerably.

“He paid $44 million, but you have to realize that there was a guy right below him who dropped out after the price was $42 million or something.

“There’s somebody out there disappointed because he did not get a dinosaur for $42 million. There’s not a lot of these around. Dinosaurs do not grow on trees.”

But his own is not for sale.

“I saw this as a hell of an opportunity. It doesn’t need watering, it doesn’t need feeding and it’s 65 million years old. It’s just such a great thing.”