Gus is the name of a skeleton Tyrannosaurus rex that paleontologists collected between 2021 and 2023. They have just put it up for auction and reached a record price: more than 50 million dollars. The value exposes a growing trend that alerts specialists: private collectors compete on unequal conditions with researchers.
This skeleton is one of the largest and most complete known. The exact figure it reached was $50.1 millionat a Sotheby’s auction in New York.
The fossil, nicknamed «Gus,» was the most valuable dinosaur offered at auctionwith an estimate of between 20 and 30 million dollars. It was the subject of a bidding battle for ten minutes, according to the broadcast of the event, and the price reached an unimaginable level.
The entity celebrated the milestone in X, where it emphasized that Gus is the «most expensive» dinosaur after achieving a «world record.»
At the moment, the identity of the new owner of the skeleton is not known, discovered and collected between 2021 and 2023 in an excavation in South Dakota (USA) and dating back to the Late Cretaceous, about 67 million years ago.
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The record was previously held, with $44.6 million, by the Apex stegosaurus, acquired at Sotheby’s in 2024 by financial magnate Ken Griffith, who lent it to the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
In recent decades, dinosaur fossils have been appearing at auctions with increasingly higher prices for concern of paleontologistswho claim that their place is in research centers and not private collections.
Sotheby’s sold the first dinosaur skeleton at an auction in 1997, for 8.4 million. The last T. rex with its own name to be auctioned was Stan, a complete fossil that was sold in 2020 for 31.8 million at Christie’s.
According to Sotheby’s description, Gus is an «exceptional mounted skeleton, ready for display,» and is one of the «largest T. rex ever found,» with a body length of more than 11 meters and a height of almost four meters.
From the wishbone to the bites of other tyrannosaurs
Has 183 bone elements and is 61% complete, placing it «firmly among the most complete T. rex ever discovered.»
In addition, it includes 30 of the 32 gastralia (abdominal ribs, which are technically osteoderms and are not traditionally included in the formal bone count), which are rarely found and rarely mounted, the auction house reported.
Sotheby’s also highlighted the exceptionally well-preserved skull, with approximately 82% of the bones represented, including the six dentitions; a rare pair of humeri; a very rare furcula (lucky bone); two very well preserved feet (only one other specimen is known with two well preserved feet); a completely preserved pelvis.
During his existence, Gus was «one of the most powerful predators» in the world thanks to his strength, his «acute senses» and his ability to adapt, a statement details.
Thomas Heitkamp, president of Theropoda Expeditions and Gus’s discoverer and excavator, recalls in the note that the specimen was found in a «complex» site that preserves numerous fossils of flora and fauna, the Hell Creek Formation.
The skeleton presents pathologies, traces of a life which took place 67 million years ago: tyrannosaurid bites in the bones of the skull and the right dentary, as well as in various postcranial elements, «all of them suffered in combat or by post-mortem scavengingin addition to injuries occurring during the individual’s lifetime, with discernible fractured and healed bones in several ribs and gastralia.»
The buyer, anonymous until now, acquired the fossils and also the rights to the skeleton.
With information from EFE
