Rare T. rex fossil sells for record US$50.1 million at auction
A rare T. rex skeleton nicknamed 'Gus' sold at a Sotheby's auction for a record-breaking US$50.1 million. The sale has sparked debate among paleontologists, who argue that private ownership of fossils hinders scientific research and accessibility.
Why it matters
The record-breaking sale highlights the tension between the commercial value of natural history artifacts and the scientific community's need for public access to specimens.
A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton from South Dakota has become the world’s most expensive fossil sold at auction, after fetching a record US$50,130,000 at Sotheby’s in New York Tuesday.
The skeleton, which is about 67 million years old, is nicknamed Gus after the late Gary ‘Gus’ Licking, a cattle rancher from Harding County, South Dakota, who owned the land where the specimen was found. He died in 2022, one year into the excavation of the fossil.
Gus the T. rex is 38 feet long and 12.5 feet tall, with a skull measuring 54 inches, which makes it one of the largest T. rexes ever found, according to Sotheby’s. It includes 183 fossil bone elements, making it about 61 per cent complete by bone count, or 75 per cent to 80 per cent complete by mass.
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