A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton nicknamed “Gus” sold for (US)$50.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York, making it the most valuable dinosaur fossil bought at auction after a 10-minute battle between seven bidders.<\/p>\n
The giant beast lived some 72 to 66 million years ago – a period characterised by a warm climate, high sea levels and vast floodable coastal plains.<\/p>\n
The skeleton measures 11.6 metres in body length, making it one of the largest T. rexes ever discovered. It is roughly 63 percent complete.<\/p>\n
Tuesday’s purchase by an anonymous buyer highlights a surging market for dinosaur bones – a trend that has drawn criticism from some paleontologists over the specimens going into private hands.<\/p>\n
“The United States is the only country in the world where fossils like this are considered personal property,” Cassandra Hatton, head of science and natural history at Sotheby’s, told AFP before the auction.<\/p>\n
“If you own the land, you own the fossil and you have the right to sell it. So if you want a dinosaur, this is the only place that you can get it,” she said.<\/p>\n
The previous record for a fossil auction was “Apex” the Stegosaurus, bought for (US)$44.6 million in 2024 by hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton nicknamed “Gus” sold for (US)$50.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York, making it the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-526187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}