$20 million to $30 million is the estimate Sotheby’s in New York has put on Gus, one of the largest and most complete T. rex skeletons discovered to date. The sale is set for Tuesday and has revived a familiar argument in the fossil trade: a specimen can be legal to sell and still be out of reach for science.
3.8 metres is how tall Gus stands in a mounted predatory pose, and the skeleton is thought to be about 67 million years old. For museums and universities, that price range points to a market where a single private buyer can outbid public institutions that would otherwise keep a fossil accessible for study.
Richard Butler on rare artworks
“The current trend towards dinosaur fossils being marketed and sold like rare artworks at vast prices by auction houses is very concerning, as is the idea of buying dinosaur fossils as a status symbol or a commodity,” Richard Butler said. The vertebrate palaeontologist at the University of Birmingham added: “A fossil not in a recognised museum collection cannot be studied and is therefore lost to research.”
44.6 million dollars is the benchmark set by Apex, a stegosaurus that sold at a Sotheby’s auction in 2024. Gus sits below that figure on estimate alone, but the scale still puts the auction in the same bracket of trophy sales that can reshape who gets to own major prehistoric finds.
Cole Jacobs and the dig
“I straddled the road, walked up, and it was the very first thing I laid eyes on on the first day. I saw the metatarsal poking out of the ground,” Cole Jacobs said in a promotional video from Sotheby’s. The field prospector for Theropoda Expeditions helped excavate the fossil over a three-year period from 2021 on a ranch in Harding County, South Dakota, with permission from the landowner, Gary “Gus” Licking.
8 million dollars is what Sue fetched in 1997, when the Field Museum in Chicago bought the first T rex sold at auction with support from private donors and companies including McDonald’s Corporation. That earlier purchase showed how hard it can be for public institutions to compete, even before today’s tens-of-millions market for dinosaur skeletons.
Stephen Brusatte on legality
“As this dinosaur was found in the USA, and in America you can do what you want with what you find on your land, the auction looks to be legal. But as a scientist it still concerns me,” Stephen Brusatte said. The professor of vertebrate palaeontology at the University of Edinburgh also said that if a dinosaur like this fetches tens of millions of dollars, “there’s little that scientists or museums or universities can do. Those prices can only be paid by the super-rich.”
Some countries, including Brazil and Mongolia, require all fossils to belong to the state. In the USA, that rule does not apply in the same way to a fossil found on private land, which is why the sale can proceed even as researchers warn that the specimen may end up out of reach for study.
Michael Benton, a professor of vertebrate palaeontology at the University of Bristol, said: “Occasionally things can work well when the purchaser realises they can get even more pleasure from their purchase by sharing it with a wide community, for example through loaning or donating it to a mus”
