T REX FOSSIL FETCHES $50.1M, SETTING NEW AUCTION RECORD

Wed 15 July 2026:

One of the largest fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons ever found sold for a record $50.1 million, including fees, at Sotheby’s in New York on Tuesday.

Nicknamed “Gus” after the owner of the land where it was found in the Hell Creek Formation in Harding County, South Dakota, the fossil measures approximately 38 feet (11.5 meters) in body length, has a 54 inch (137 centimeter) skull and a 50.39 inch (128 centimeter) femur, and stands 12 1/2 feet (3.8 meters) tall, according to Sotheby’s auction lot description.

Gus has 183 fossil bone elements and is approximately 61% complete by bone count, with the bones representing 75-80% of the animal’s bone mass, making it one of the most complete T. rex skeletons ever found.

Excavated between 2021-2023, the fossil is believed to be 67 million years old.

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The skeleton sold well above its pre-sale estimate of $20 to $30 million, breaking the previous record held by a stegosaurus called Apex, which sold for $44.6 million at Sotheby’s in 2024.

“This result has been years in the making,” said Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s vice-chairman and global head of science and natural history. “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.”

With its impressive dagger-like teeth and behemoth size, and its being “mounted in a predatory pose”, Gus is believed to be 67m years old.

It stands at 3.8 metres (12.5ft) tall and has been an attraction at the auction house’s new headquarters in New York.

The skeleton’s head is so large and heavy that it is not mounted on Gus’s skeleton. It instead has been sitting in the lobby of Sotheby’s Breuer building as a stark reminder that brutalist architecture is no match for the brutalism of a T rex bite, which Sotheby’s described as “huge teeth displayed within the gaping jaws”.

A reproduction head is fitted on the skeleton itself.

The skeleton also reveals some aspects of the life Gus lived on the hills of South Dakota, including a number of pathologies. Gus shows “signs of tyrannosaurid bite marks to the skull bones and right dentary, as well as to several post-cranial elements, all sustained by either combat or postmortem scavenging, in addition to injuries which occurred during the life of the individual, with fractured and healed bones discernible in several ribs and gastralia”.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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