T rex fossil ‘Gus’ sells for $50.1m at New York auction, setting new record

‘Gus’, a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, at Sotheby's at the Breuer building in New York City. Photograph: John Angelillo/UPI/Shutterstock View image in fullscreen ‘Gus’, a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, at Sotheby's at the Breuer building in New York City. Photograph: John Angelillo/UPI/Shutterstock T rex fossil ‘Gus’ sells for $50.1m at New York auction, setting new record Skeleton judged to be one of the largest and most complete ever unearthed was excavated on a ranch in South Dakota A vast, fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex nicknamed Gus sold at Sotheby’s in New York on Tuesday for $50.1m with fees (£37.4m) to a phone bidder – making it the most valuable dinosaur fossil sold at auction. It also sold well above a pre-sale estimate of $20m to $30m (£15m to £22.4m). 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. Gus – which takes its name from Gary “Gus” Licking, owner of the land where the skeleton was discovered and excavated between 2021 and 2023 – 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. Sale of multimillion-dollar T rex skeleton is big headache for scientists Read more With its impressive dagger-like teeth and behemoth size, and its being “mounted in a predatory pose”, Gus is believed to be 67m years old. It stands at 3.8 metres (12.5ft) tall and has been an attraction at the auction house’s new headquarters in New York . The skeleton’s head is so large and heavy that it is not actually mounted on Gus’s skeleton. It instead has been sitting in the lobby of Sotheby’s Breuer building as a stark reminder that brutalist architecture is no match for the brutalism of a T-Rex bite which Sotheby’s described as “huge teeth displayed within the gaping jaws.” A reproduction head is fitted on the skeleton itself. In Sotheby’s sale prospectus, the auction house said it was listing Gus as a “monumental item” that would, “in our opinion, require special handling or shipping services due to size or other physical considerations”. Gus – lot 20 in Tuesday’s auction – was presented by Sotheby’s as “an outstanding exhibition-ready mounted skeleton”. 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 “Gus” as “one of the largest T rex ever found,” Sotheby’s said. The auctioneer said the skeleton contained 183 fossil bone elements, plus 30 of the 32 rarely found – much less mounted – gastralia (belly ribs). Those figures make Gus approximately 61% complete by bone count, 75 to 80% complete in terms of bone mass – while having an “exceptionally preserved skull” that includes all six dentitions. The skeleton also reveals some aspects of the life Gus lived on the hills of South Dakota, includ