A T-Rex by the name of Gus is going up for auction — and he could be the most expensive dinosaur ever sold
The dinosaur skeleton will be on the market as part of Sotheby’s Geek Week auction, next month.
This year, Sotheby's Geek Week auction includes a T-Rex, whose name is Gus. The mounted skeleton in the New York sale, which will take place on July 14, is being termed by the auction house as ‘one of the largest and most complete T-Rexes ever discovered’.
The T-Rex is 67 million years old and the most valuable dinosaur offered at auction, Sotheby's say. They estimate it will sell for between $20-30 million (about £14.8-22.30 million) — the highest estimate ever for a dinosaur at auction.
Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby's vice-chairman and worldwide head of science and natural history says: ‘Gus is the culmination of years of rigorous excavation and preparation under some of the most challenging field conditions imaginable.’ She adds: ‘Tyrannosaurus rex is the most iconic prehistoric species in the fossil record, and Gus stands firmly among the greatest examples ever found.’
Gus’s skeleton is approximately 63% complete by bone count and 75-80% complete when it comes to the total mass of the skeleton, which is impressive when it comes to dinosaur skeletons consisting of only one specimen.
The first dinosaur ever sold at auction was by Sotheby's in 1997. Sue, also a T-Rex, sold for $8 million and now lives at the Field Museum in Chicago. Sue is about 73% complete by bone count and 90% when it comes to the total mass.
In 2024 Apex, a stegosaurus and the most expensive dinosaur fossil ever sold at auction, went for $45 million. Apex can now be found on long-term loan to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Gus will be available to view at Sotheby's in New York from July 1 until the sale.
Thomas Heitkamp, the president of Theropoda Expeditions and the discoverer and excavator of Gus says: ‘This specimen took three years to excavate, with the team sometimes working four weeks straight without finding a thing.
He adds: ‘It really does feel like tackling the world’s hardest puzzle, except we have to find all the pieces first. All those bones separated for 67 million years that we can now, almost magically, fit back together. There’s something deeply satisfying about that.’
Dana Licking, owner of the ranch in South Dakota where Gus was excavated, says: ‘It will be exciting to see how many others will get to enjoy this spectacular discovery.’ Gus was named after Dana's late husband Gary ‘Gus’ Licking, who she owned the ranch with and who died one year into the excavation. It was Gary who had suggested the area for excavation where Gus was discovered.
The ethics of dinosaur auctions are complicated. For individuals specialising in a distinct genus of dinosaurs, a private auction can be devastating beyond comprehension. ‘As with all science, we like the raw material to be available for all people to use it to verify those results, and unless there's a guarantee that you can go back to those skeletons over and over again — because one person might have got something wrong or missed something — then we're not capable of doing the science properly,’ said Professor Paul Barrett of The Natural History Museum in London when I spoke to him last year regarding a similar sale.
‘Most of the scientific journals will not allow you to publish on a specimen that's in private hands, because of that problem of reproducibility, essentially,’ he added. ‘So everything that is a significant specimen that goes into a private collection in the short term, at least, is a loss to science.’
When I spoke to Hatton of Sotheby's, also last year, she said: ‘I think we can all have great ideals, but the reality is that [dinosaurs] are personal property. In the United States, you own your property. If your fossil comes off your property, you own the fossil and you have the right to sell it.
‘So there's a difference between what you think would be a perfect world, and what is the reality. And frankly, if we don't excavate the dinosaurs, they're lost. So it is because of the commercial trade that we have found so many.’
Gus the T-Rex will go under the hammer on July 14 with Sotheby's — visit their website for more information.
Revisit our feature on the ethics of dinosaur auctions, here.
