Rare T. rex fossil sells for record $50.1 million at auction

A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton from South Dakota has become the world’s most expensive fossil sold at auction, after fetching a record $50,130,000 at Sotheby’s in New York Tuesday.

The skeleton, which is about 67 million years old, is nicknamed Gus after the late Gary ‘Gus’ Licking, a cattle rancher from Harding County, South Dakota, who owned the land where the specimen was found. He died in 2022, one year into the excavation of the fossil.

Gus the T. rex is 38 feet long and 12.5 feet tall, with a skull measuring 54 inches, which makes it one of the largest T. rexes ever found, according to Sotheby’s. It includes 183 fossil bone elements, making it about 61% complete by bone count, or 75% to 80% complete by mass.

The presale estimate for Gus was between $20 and $30 million. The winning bid was placed over the phone.