T. rex Fossil 'Gus' Sells for Record $50.1 Million, Sparking Paleontologist Outcry

An imposing, 38-foot long Tyrannosaurus rex fossil sold for a record $50.1 million at auction on Tuesday. But its purchase — likely by a private buyer — is being criticized by paleontologists and other scientists.

The fossil nicknamed Gus is considered one of the largest and most complete T. rex skeletons ever discovered. Many hoped a museum would buy the impressive specimen but the Smithsonian and three other large natural history museums that NPR contacted said they did not bid on it. Because the fossil may not be available for public viewing or research, the sale has upset many in the scientific community.

The president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, an advocacy group of scientists, openly criticized Sotheby's, which handled the sale.

"The auction houses like Sotheby's and Christie's are complicit in removing data from the scientific process," Stuart Sumida told NPR. "And [they are] complicit [in] placing scientifically valuable specimens into the cabinets of curiosity of a few wealthy individuals and away from the eyes of children and adults alike for years to come."

Treasures auctioned off to private buyers do sometimes disappear from public view. In recent years, paintings considered masterpieces have been purchased by billionaires and have ended up on their superyachts. A privately owned Archaeopteryx fossil — one of just 14 ever found — was lost. Because of their size, T. rexes are more difficult to keep under wraps. But another auctioned giant dinosaur, known as Stan, disappeared for nearly two years, until a National Geographic reporter tracked it down.

Who profits and who loses?

Proceeds from the $50.1 million sale will go to Sotheby's, Theropoda Expeditions, which excavated the fossil, and the owners of the land where Gus was discovered. The fossil was found by the late Gary "Gus" Licking, a cattle rancher in Harding County, South Dakota. He had been coming across teeth and bones on his land for years and eventually called in paleontologists to dig in the area.

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology issued a strongly worded statement condemning the sale. "[S]cientifically significant vertebrate fossils should be permanently curated in accredited museums, universities, and other public research institutions where they remain available for scientific investigation, education, and public exhibition."

Sotheby's has previously defended these auctions. NPR did not hear back in time for this story, but when asked by NPR about the controversial sale of another dinosaur two years ago, Cassandra Hatton, the Global Head of Science & Natural History at Sotheby's said, "we find that clients overwhelmingly purchase specimens either for museums or donate them."

To date, no scientific work has been formally conducted or published on Gus. Sumida says this is because no reputable journal would accept a study based on a privately owned specimen as it may be unavailable for future review. "Proper science cannot be done with purchased private specimens," he says.

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology has written letters of protest to auction houses in the past, but Sumida says it no longer plans to. He says the letters have not only been largely ignored, but also the information in them have been "cherry-picked" to prop up a fossil's valuation. Sumida says his organization has "never ascribed value to fossils" and considers them "invaluable parts of our planet's natural heritage."

Not everyone in the dinosaur world is a critic

Walter Stein, former collections manager for the Wyoming Dinosaur Center and the current owner of PaleoAdventures in western South Dakota, says finding and digging up fossils takes a lot of work, and corporations have an important role in making that possible. He says fossils like Gus require thousands of hours of "careful, patient, hard labor under rugged conditions" to dig up. Stein argues that $50.1 million is not as high as it might seem.

Stein credits more than half of excavated T. rex fossils to "commercial interests with a profit motive." Companies, he says, play an important role in finding and preserving these fossils, because public institutions don't have the resources to save all of them. Stein himself previously dug up a Teratophoneus — a cousin of the T. rex — that he found in 2002, and he says he's currently working on a T. rex named Leonard. He says he doesn't mind if some of these fossils go into private hands if the alternative is that they "weather away to dust."

As for research on privately held specimens, he says it's up to the field whether to study fossils such as Gus.

"If academics choose not to study specimens like this, then they are intentionally ignoring over half of the available data," he says, referencing the field's reservations about studying Gus and other privately held fossils.

If only it were that simple, says David Hone, a paleontologist at Queen Mary University of London. "I'll be amazed if this is ever donated to a museum and research happens on it." Academia just can't compete with wealthy individuals who want a trophy, he says.

Gus is the latest dinosaur fossil to fetch increasingly stratospheric prices. Tuesday's sale broke the previous record of $44.6 million set by a Stegosaurus fossil in 2024, which in turn broke another T. rex record of $31.8 million in 2020.

Paying this kind of money is basically out of reach of nearly anyone, says Hone. "You could probably pay the full salary and research costs of every dinosaur paleontologist in a museum or university around the world for a few years on that money," he adds.