![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/5156084_1_articleinline_Tyrannosaurus_202_1_.jpg\" "\\"The")
The head of ‘Gus’, part of a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton, one of the largest T. rex ever found, is pictured during a press preview at the Sotheby’s Breuer building in New York, on July 1, 2026. Picture: TIMOTHY A. CLARY \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\nA vast, fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex nicknamed Gus sold at Sotheby\u2019s in New York on Tuesday for $50.1m with fees to a phone bidder \u2013 making it the most valuable dinosaur fossil sold at auction.<\/p>\n
It also sold well above a pre-sale estimate of $20m to $30m.<\/p>\n
The skeleton, judged to be one of the largest and most complete ever unearthed, was excavated on a ranch in Harding county, South Dakota, by the commercial fossil outfit Theropoda Expeditions.<\/p>\n
Gus \u2013 which takes its name from Gary \u201cGus\u201d Licking, owner of the land where the skeleton was discovered and excavated between 2021 and 2023 \u2013 had been the subject of scientific debate in the days leading up to the auction over claims that selling it into private hands could limit palaeontological research.<\/p>\n
With its impressive dagger-like teeth and behemoth size, and its being \u201cmounted in a predatory pose\u201d, Gus is believed to be 67m years old.<\/p>\n
It stands at 3.8 metres tall and has been an attraction at the auction house\u2019s new headquarters in New York.<\/p>\n
The skeleton\u2019s head is so large and heavy that it is not actually mounted on Gus\u2019s skeleton. It instead has been sitting in the lobby of Sotheby\u2019s Breuer building as a stark reminder that brutalist architecture is no match for the brutalism of a T-Rex bite which Sotheby\u2019s described as \u201chuge teeth displayed within the gaping jaws.\u201d A reproduction head is fitted on the skeleton itself.<\/p>\n
In Sotheby\u2019s sale prospectus, the auction house said it was listing Gus as a \u201cmonumental item\u201d that would, \u201cin our opinion, require special handling or shipping services due to size or other physical considerations\u201d.<\/p>\n
Gus \u2013 lot 20 in Tuesday\u2019s auction \u2013 was presented by Sotheby\u2019s as \u201can outstanding exhibition-ready mounted skeleton\u201d. Beside its height, the auction house listed a body length of approximately 38ft, a skull length of 54in and a femur length of 50.39in. That cemented \u201cGus\u201d as \u201cone of the largest T rex ever found,\u201d Sotheby\u2019s said.<\/p>\n
The head of ‘Gus’, part of a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton, one of the largest T. rex ever found, is pictured during a press preview at the Sotheby’s Breuer building in New York, on July 1, 2026. Picture: TIMOTHY A. CLARY \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
The auctioneer said the skeleton contained 183 fossil bone elements, plus 30 of the 32 rarely found \u2013 much less mounted \u2013 gastralia (belly ribs). Those figures make Gus approximately 61% complete by bone count, 75 to 80% complete in terms of bone mass \u2013 while having an \u201cexceptionally preserved skull\u201d that includes all six dentitions.<\/p>\n
The skeleton also reveals some aspects of the life Gus lived on the hills of South Dakota, including a number of pathologies. Gus shows \u201csigns of tyrannosaurid bite marks to the skull bones and right dentary, as well as to several post-cranial elements, all sustained by either combat or postmortem scavenging, in addition to injuries which occurred during the life of the individual, with fractured and healed bones discernible in several ribs and gastralia\u201d.<\/p>\n
The sale beats the previous record for a dinosaur fossil at auction. A stegosaurus called Apex held the record as of Tuesday, having sold at a Sotheby\u2019s auction in 2024 for $44.6m.<\/p>\n
Prior to auction, palaeontologists worried that sales like Gus could damage their studies by placing dinosaur skeletons out of the reach of academic institutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current trend towards dinosaur fossils being marketed and sold like rare artworks at vast prices by auction houses is very concerning, as is the idea of buying dinosaur fossils as a status symbol or a commodity,\u201d professor Richard Butler, a vertebrate palaeontolgist at England\u2019s University of Birmingham, told the Guardian.<\/p>\n
\u201cA fossil not in a recognised museum collection cannot be studied and is therefore lost to research. Fossils have been bought and sold for hundreds of years, but prices are increasingly out of the reach of museums, much to the detriment of science.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Professor Stephen Brusatte, of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, agreed. \u201cAs this dinosaur was found in the USA, and in America you can do what you want with what you find on your land, the auction looks to be legal,\u201d he said. \u201cBut as a scientist, it still concerns me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In some countries, such as Brazil or Mongolia, all fossils belong to the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A vast, fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex nicknamed Gus sold at Sotheby\u2019s in New York on Tuesday for $50.1m with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,1042,60,1094,82,386],"class_list":["post-549536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ie","tag-international","tag-ireland","tag-report","tag-science","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}