\n Stan, an almost-complete T. rex skeleton discovered miles up the road from Licking\u2019s place, sold at auction in 2020 for $31.8 million, a record at the time<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Now, the rancher\u2019s 6,500-acre property in Harding County is writing its own chapter in Hell Creek history, having yielded a fossil near the magnitude of Stan. Named Gus<\/a> in honor of Licking, the newer skeleton is set to be auctioned Tuesday at Sotheby\u2019s in New York City, when it could become the world\u2019s most expensive fossil.\n <\/p>\n \n But Gus\u2019 sale, likely into private hands, is also bound to spark controversy because of what it represents: a paleontological predicament in which experts say ownership and stewardship are increasingly at odds \u2014 and science is usually the loser.\n <\/p>\n \n In Gus\u2019 case, this conundrum began with a chance encounter. Licking had found dinosaur teeth and bones over the years, only dreaming of a bigger find until he met a stranger who would make it a reality. \u201cI was passing by the ranch randomly one day and Gary was checking a watering trough near the road, so I stopped I and introduced myself,\u201d said Thomas Heitkamp, a commercial paleontologist and founder of Theropoda Expeditions, a Texas-based company that specializes in excavating fossils on private land.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe Licking ranch had been on my radar because of its location within the Hell Creek formation. Gary had always been interested in fossils and artifacts, and he had quite a good collection of things he had found in his home,\u201d Heitkamp told CNN in an email. \u201cI think he knew how fossil-rich his property was from spending so much of his life there, and he believed if it was hunted thoroughly enough, a specimen might be found someday. I\u2019m happy we were able to give him that experience.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Heitkamp and his team discovered Gus on Licking\u2019s land in 2021. Licking singled out<\/a> the skeleton\u2019s approximate location, but he died before the team completed the excavation and never saw the specimen in its full glory.\n <\/p>\n \n At 38 feet in length and 12.5 feet tall, with a skull measuring 54 inches, Gus is one of the largest T. rexes ever found, according to Sotheby\u2019s. It includes 183 fossil bone elements, making it about 61% complete by bone count, or 75% to 80% complete by mass.\n <\/p>\n \n The auction house said Gus is one of the most complete T. rex fossils ever found, but the specimen is less complete than both Stan, which is about 70% complete by bone count, and Sue<\/a> \u2014 the first dinosaur fossil sold at auction in 1997. The latter skeleton set the standard with its impressive 90% completeness<\/a>. Gus also reportedly shows bite marks and evidence of fractures that the dinosaur survived, which Sotheby\u2019s said may add to its scientific significance.\n <\/p>\n \n However, no scientific work has been published on Gus, because most researchers will refuse to formally study a privately held specimen. Heitkamp said that \u201cseveral independent researchers\u201d have already seen Gus informally, but the sale \u2014 perfectly legal because the fossil comes from private land \u2014 is destined to reignite the debate about fossil auctions and the potential disappearance from the public realm of T. rex skeletons, the majority of which are already in private hands<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIf this specimen goes to a private individual, it may or may not ever be seen by the public again,\u201d said Stuart Sumida, a professor of biology at California State University, San Bernardino, and president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, or SVP, an organization that firmly opposes fossil sales. When a fossil ends up in private hands, its future is uncertain. Some fossils are loaned to institutions such as museums, while remaining privately owned, while others wind up in private collections and disappear from the public realm.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cNot only that, it will never be subjected to actual proper scientific study \u2014 no reputable journal in the world will publish a scientific study based on something that\u2019s not held in the public trust,\u201d Sumida added.\n <\/p>\n \n SVP mandates its members study only specimens held in publicly accessible collections. Doing so is the only way that other scientists can access the same specimens for further study \u2014 something that can\u2019t be guaranteed with private ownership.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIf you sell something, it\u2019s generally lost to science,\u201d Sumida said. And there are few clear ways to turn back the clock.\n <\/p>\n \n Heitkamp said his team had been hiking around Licking\u2019s ranch for a year before finding Gus in a small valley with little visible bedrock, which is why it had been missed earlier. \u201cIt was immediately clear that the fossil material was from a T. rex, which is always exciting to see,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n Heitkamp, who started his career cataloging fossils at Bonhams auction house in Los Angeles before founding Theropoda Expeditions in 2012, excavated the Licking site over the course of three field seasons, from 2021 to 2023. He and his team could only work for about five months each year when the ground wasn\u2019t frozen.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe hand dug an area of roughly 7,000 square feet to collect all of the material,\u2019 he said. \u201cThe site had several natural faults, which made tracking the fossil layer more difficult. The sheer number of bones over that wide of an area definitely provided its technical challenges.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n After the excavation, an equal amount of lab work followed to properly isolate, identify and clean up the bones, as well as fill in gaps left by missing bones using sculpted pieces made of epoxy resin, and finally mounting the skeleton in a \u201cpredatory pose\u201d on a custom steel armature, according to Sotheby\u2019s<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Apart from its large size, Gus has other aspects that make it desirable. 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\u2019s said only one other specimen is known to have two well-represented feet.\n <\/p>\n \n Sotheby\u2019s estimates that Gus will go for up to $30 million, but that amount is likely a conservative number. The current record holder for a fossil auction \u2014 Apex the Stegosaurus, bought in 2024 by billionaire Ken Griffin \u2014 had a presale estimate of up to $6 million but went for $44.6 million.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n Gus also comes with \u201cfull rights,\u201d meaning it does not contain any copyrighted bits of other dinosaurs, which might make it more appealing to potential buyers and drive up the price since they would hold those rights. Usually, when a bone is missing from a skeleton, a cast from another, existing skeleton is purchased to fill in the gap. The de facto standard for this process is Stan, the neighboring T. rex from the same South Dakota county as Gus.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIn most museums that have a T. rex, what you actually see is a casting of Stan, and most T. rex that have come to market before have been partially Stan, because that has been the only place to get full replica material,\u201d said Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby\u2019s vice chairman and worldwide head of science and natural history, who managed the sale of Apex and is now handling Gus.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThis T. rex has no Stan material in it. The team who excavated this dinosaur has excavated other T. rex, and they have made their own scans and molds of everything, so they were able to make Gus completely free of Stan,\u201d Hatton said. A buyer could, potentially, make Gus a Stan competitor and license or produce casts for museums or private collectors.\n <\/p>\n \n Hatton acknowledged that no formal scientific study is possible on Gus but added that \u201call of the great museums in the world started from private collections.\u201d The investment of time and money put into excavating and polishing a skeleton such as Gus would not be possible, according to Hatton, without the prospect of a high-value sale.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cNobody can dispute the fact that if these fossils are not excavated, they are lost,\u201d she said. \u201cThere aren\u2019t people going out there to dig these up. It is the commercial paleontologists who are spending their own money and their own time to go.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n When asked where she hopes Gus ends up, Hatton said, \u201cSomewhere that I could take my son to see it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Heitkamp echoes Hatton\u2019s point of view on the urgency of retrieving fossils such as Gus. \u201cI don\u2019t know ultimately where Gus will end up,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I know that it is important that he was found before time erased him completely.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n There\u2019s a certain amount of truth in that sentiment, according to David Hone, a paleontologist and reader in zoology at Queen Mary University of London. \u201cThere\u2019s only so many paleontologists in the world who\u2019ve got time to excavate stuff and collect it and put it in museums, so some things would be lost, absolutely, and potentially even some valuable things,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n However, Hone argued, a museum or other public institutions could easily unearth specimens such as Gus if only the landowners where these discoveries come up so wished. These institutions could then put a professional paleontologist, rather than a commercial one, in charge of the excavation.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIf you gave me a million dollars, that\u2019s probably more than enough money to go find and dig up a T. rex. Five million would pretty much guarantee it. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019d be as good as this one, but it\u2019d be a 10th of the price, maybe a 20th of the price,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n The SVP\u2019s Sumida agrees that private landowners who believe there are precious fossils on their land also have the option of involving a museum rather than a commercial operation. \u201cTo suggest that they are somehow saving the dinosaurs for the world is quite an exaggeration, because paleontologists can do that and help you make money doing it,\u201d he said. \u201cI have many colleagues who have done tremendous work with private landowners.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n One possible solution to the conundrum, according to Sumida, is to institute a scientific equivalent of the Giving Pledge<\/a>, a campaign started by Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates to encourage the world\u2019s super-wealthy to commit more than half of their fortunes to philanthropic causes and charitable organizations.\n <\/p>\n \n Having spoken to some buyers of expensive fossils, Hone said he believes they want both ownership and public access, but they can\u2019t have both.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cDon\u2019t pretend you\u2019re doing science a service by paying $50 million to put a T. rex in your house, because you\u2019ve just bought something, in the same way that if you find some ultrarare Ferrari in a barn and have it restored and put in your house, it\u2019s not a great thing for car enthusiasts, you just own it now \u2014 and that\u2019s fine, but it\u2019s not bringing benefit or joy to anyone outside of you,\u201d Hone said. \u201cFossils are not scientific specimens until they\u2019re in museums, and they\u2019re not being formally studied until they\u2019re in museums.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Sometimes, even ending up in a museum won\u2019t suffice. Apex the Stegosaurus is currently on a four-year loan<\/a> at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and visible to the public, but according to Sumida, that doesn\u2019t fix the problem.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cPeople will get to see it, but once you mount a specimen, you can\u2019t study it. You have to study the pieces individually, or how they were associated in the ground,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce somebody has rebuilt part of it in plaster and painted it, you can look at it, but you can\u2019t study it. Gus has also been mounted to look very, very pretty, so that someone will buy it. It\u2019s now unstudiable.\u201d\n <\/p>\n ![\"Gus](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/photo-credit-matthew-sherman-4.jpg\")
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