Massive T. rex fossil roars to $50 million sale, becoming one of the priciest ever auctioned

A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton nicknamed “Gus” sold for $50.1 million Tuesday at Sotheby’s, becoming the most expensive set of dinosaur bones ever sold at auction, the auction house said.

The 67-million-year-old fossil blew past its $20 million to $30 million estimate after a 10-minute bidding war involving seven bidders, Sotheby’s said.

According to The Associated Press, the winning bidder participated by phone and chose to remain anonymous.

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“This result has been years in the making, and I’m thrilled to see that the hard work and dedication of Thomas Heitkamp and his team has been recognized,” Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s vice chairman and worldwide head of Science & Natural History, said in a statement.

“Gus is not only an exceptional find, but a specimen that’s been excavated, documented, prepared, and cared for with real excellence. The market responds when great specimens are taken care of in the right way.”

Standing about 12½ feet tall and stretching roughly 38 feet long, Gus is one of the largest and most complete T. rex specimens ever discovered, according to Sotheby’s.

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The skeleton includes 183 fossil bone elements, making it about 61% complete by bone count and representing an estimated 75% to 80% of the dinosaur’s original bone mass.

The skeleton also offers clues about what Gus endured during its lifetime. Sotheby’s said several ribs and belly bones show fractures that healed before the dinosaur died, while bite marks on parts of the skull and other bones may have been caused by scavenging.

The road to Tuesday’s record-breaking sale began on a cattle ranch in Harding County, South Dakota.

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According to Sotheby’s, ranch owner Gary “Gus” Licking had spent years finding teeth and small bone fragments on his property before partnering with Thomas Heitkamp and his team from Theropoda Expeditions to search for something larger.

Licking pointed the team toward an area of his 6,500-acre ranch where he believed something significant lay beneath the surface, and that is where the fossil was ultimately discovered.

Licking died in 2022, about a year after the excavation began, before the full scope of the discovery was known. The dinosaur was later named in his honor.

However, unearthing Gus was no small task.

Sotheby’s said Heitkamp’s team spent three field seasons excavating the fossil before years of lab work cleaning, documenting and assembling the skeleton.

“This is our longest-term project ever,” Hatton said in a video released by Sotheby’s. “From the day the first bone was discovered, we’ve been going back and forth to South Dakota to oversee this whole process.”

Dana Licking, Gary’s widow, said she was grateful the fossil was uncovered.

“I’m really grateful that they found it because it could have been lost and nobody ever would learn anything about it,” she said in the Sotheby’s video. “To make it come to life takes a lot of love and care and dedication, and they stopped at nothing to make that happen.”

Heitkamp said uncovering the massive predator required years of persistence.

“This specimen took three years to excavate,” he said in the Sotheby’s video. “In the end, our diligence paid off, and we were delighted to discover what turned out to be a huge and incredibly complete T. rex specimen.”

The record-breaking sale also renewed a long-running debate over whether rare dinosaur fossils belong in private collections or public museums.

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology said specimens like Gus are best preserved in museums, where they can remain available for scientific research and public education.

According to the AP, the group hopes the fossil’s new owner ultimately chooses to make it accessible to the public.

“Our hope is that the new owner recognizes the extraordinary scientific and educational value of Gus the T. rex and that they aim to keep it in the public trust by immediately donating it to an accredited natural history museum,” the group’s president-elect, Kristi Curry Rogers, said in a statement, according to the AP.

Gus broke the previous auction record set by “Apex,” a stegosaurus skeleton that sold for $44.6 million at Sotheby’s in 2024 and is now on long-term loan to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Before that, the T. rex known as “Stan” sold for nearly $32 million in 2020, according to the AP.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.