A 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton known as Gus has sold for $50.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York, becoming the most expensive fossil ever auctioned. The unidentified buyer, bidding by telephone, defeated six rivals during a 10-minute contest that pushed the price far beyond its $20 million to $30 million estimate.
The sale is a landmark for the rapidly expanding market in dinosaur fossils. It has also revived a question that has followed almost every major fossil auction in recent years: when an irreplaceable piece of Earth’s history becomes a multimillion-dollar collectible, will researchers and the public ever see it again?