A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton from South Dakota has become the world’s most expensive fossil sold at auction, after fetching a record $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% complete by bone count, or 75% to 80% complete by mass.Gus was excavated across three seasons, from 2021 to 2023, and was then subject to three more years of lab work to clean up and mount the bones. – Jordan Tovin/ReutersLike many other T. rex skeletons, Gus comes from the Hell Creek Formation, a legendary geological boneyard that stretches across Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas. One of the first skeletons of T. rex was found there in 1902, and the name T. rex was given to the species based on fossils unearthed in this area.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe previous record for a fossil auction belonged to Apex the Stegosaurus, bought in 2024 by billionaire Ken Griffin for $44.6 million. It is currently halfway through a 4-year loan at New York’s Museum of Natural History.The presale estimate for Gus was between $20 and $30 million. The winning bid was placed over the phone.Lost to science?Paleontologists generally believe that once a fossil ends up in private hands, it is lost to science. Scientific journals will only publish research conducted on specimens held in publicly accessible collections; if a fossil is privately held, studies can’t be reliably reproduced, an important standard for verifying scientific findings.About about 61% complete by bone count, Gus is one of the most complete T. rex fossils ever found, according to Sotheby’s. – Matthew Sherman/Courtesy Sotheby’sGus has many features that made it interesting both to scientists and prospective buyers. The skull has about 82% of the original bones represented, and the skeleton includes rarely found components such as the wishbone, a complete pelvis and both feet. Sotheby’s said only one other specimen is known to have two well-represented feet. Gus reportedly also shows bite marks and evidence of fractures that the dinosaur survived.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe auction house said Gus is one of the most complete T. rex fossils ever found, but the specimen is less complete than Stan — a T. rex sold at auction in 2020 for $31.8 million, which is about 70% complete by bone count — and Sue, the first d …
