38 feet, 67 million years old: the T. rex that just broke an auction record

A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton nicknamed ‘Gus’ has become the most expensive dinosaur fossil ever sold, fetching $50.1 million at a Sotheby’s auction in New York. According to Sotheby’s, the 67-million-year-old specimen measures 38 feet (11.5 metres) long and stands around 12.5 feet (3.8 metres) tall, making it one of the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex fossils ever discovered.

The skeleton is 63 per cent complete, with the preserved bones accounting for an estimated 75 to 80 per cent of the animal’s total mass. Its standout features include an exceptionally preserved skull with powerful jaws and teeth, two well-preserved feet, and several rarely found bones, including a furcula, or wishbone.

Gus was discovered in 2021 on a ranch in South Dakota, after a fossil-hunting team decided, almost on a whim, to spend a couple of days exploring a different area once they had wrapped up a nearby excavation. The first fossil they found, a metatarsal bone from the dinosaur’s foot, turned up within hours. A five-year excavation, mapping and restoration project followed, in which nearly 1,000 individual fossil pieces were recovered, catalogued and reassembled by hand.

The sale price far exceeded Sotheby’s pre-auction estimate of $20 million to $30 million, after six bidders pushed the contest into a 10-minute battle. It also surpassed the previous dinosaur auction record held by the stegosaurus ‘Apex,’ which sold for nearly $45 million in 2024, and the T. rex skeleton ‘Stan,’ which fetched close to $32 million in 2020. The winning bidder’s identity has not been made public.

Sotheby’s vice chair Cassandra Hatton said the record reflected the specimen’s exceptional quality, adding that ‘the market responds when great specimens are taken care of in the right way.’ The fossil is named after Gary Licking, the South Dakota ranch owner on whose land it was found; he died before seeing the fully restored dinosaur, though his widow, Dana Licking, remained closely involved with the project.

Tyrannosaurus rex, whose name translates to ‘King of the Tyrant Lizards,’ ruled western North America during the Late Cretaceous period, around 67 million years ago. Not all reaction to the sale was positive: the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology had urged before the auction that fossils of this scientific importance remain in public museums and research institutions.

Wikimedia Commons/by Eirik Newth