The New York auction house Sotheby’s has witnessed the most expensive purchase ever recorded for a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. The fossil “Gus” was sold for a value of 50.1 million euros, the highest ever offered for a dinosaur to date. The T-Rex was already the most valued dinosaur before the bidding started, with an approximate value between 20 and 30 million euros. After just ten minutes, an anonymous buyer ended up acquiring the dinosaur and broke the world record.
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The skeleton was found in 2021 on a cattle ranch in South Dakota, a state in the north-central United States known for being an exceptional geological area. This territory concentrates one of the most important paleontological sites in the world and had already been featured in previous dinosaur fossil discoveries. Specifically, the geological formation of this North American area was formed in the Late Cretaceous period, the last of the dinosaur era.
With 183 bone elements and 80% of its original bone mass, “Gus” is the best-preserved T-Rex in history
“Gus” is also the best-preserved T-Rex in history. It has a total of 183 elements and retains 80% of its original bone mass, according to Sotheby’s auction house. The skeleton dates back 67 million years, as was confirmed after recovering its numerous bones during two years of archaeological work.
According to sources from the auction house, “Gus” is an “exceptionally mounted skeleton” and is also “ready for display.” In total, it measures more than 11 meters in length and nearly 4 meters in height. “The Tyrannosaurus Rex is the most iconic prehistoric species in the fossil record, and ‘Gus’ is firmly among the best examples ever found,” said Cassandra Hatton, head of science and natural history at Sotheby’s.
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The previous record was held by the stegosaurus “Apex,” acquired in 2024 for 44.6 million
The highest price previously paid at a similar auction was 44.6 million dollars, for the stegosaurus “Apex,” a dinosaur from the Jurassic period also acquired at the same auction house in July 2024. On that occasion, the buyer’s name was known. It was the American investor and businessman Ken Griffin, widely known on Wall Street, who loaned the fossil to the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
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Additionally, Sotheby’s already has a recognized sales history in the field of dinosaur fossils. In 1997, it sold the first skeleton at auction for 8.4 million. Still, the last T-Rex sold, named “Stan,” was acquired for 31.8 million euros in 2020 at the also New York-based rival Christie’s, by a state entity from Abu Dhabi. It is currently exhibited at the Natural History Museum of Abu Dhabi.
The growing interest in million-dollar dinosaur skeleton auctions worries the scientific community
Dinosaur fossils have begun to attract increasing interest among investors and billionaire collectors. Many scientists have started to raise their voices against the sale of these fossils at high-level auctions. The scientific community argues that when they become part of private collections, they become inaccessible for scientific research.
In this regard, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP), an organization dedicated to the study of fossils, published a statement moments before the “Gus” auction and stated that fossils should remain in public research institutions. “Although we are aware that the most spectacular dinosaur fossils fascinate people worldwide, we maintain that specimens of such scientific importance are much more than rare collectibles,” the statement concluded.
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