A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton nicknamed Gus sold for $50.1 million at Sotheby's in New York on July 14, becoming the most expensive dinosaur fossil ever auctioned. The buyer, who bid by phone, has not been publicly identified.
The skeleton is about 61% complete, assembled from 183 bones recovered from the Hell Creek Formation in Harding County, South Dakota, and stands roughly 12.5 feet tall and 38 feet long. It dates to the end of the Cretaceous period, about 67 million years ago. Excavator Thomas Heitkamp led the dig; the fossil is named for Gary "Gus" Licking, the late rancher who owned the land where it was found, according to Sotheby's sale details.
Beating the stegosaurus
Gus's price surpassed the roughly $44.6 million paid for a stegosaurus skeleton nicknamed Apex at the same auction house two years earlier, and came in well above Sotheby's pre-sale estimate of $20 million to $30 million. Bidding lasted about 10 minutes among seven registered bidders.
[Gus's sale] has been years in the making.
Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby's vice chairman
Gary Licking died before the fossil went to auction. His wife, Dana Licking, said the sale carried personal weight.
For me the added bonus was knowing that 'Gus' was just one of the many pieces of history hidden in the land that Gary and I loved to share.
Dana Licking
The sale is part of a broader run-up in natural-history and collectibles auctions this year. Major houses took in nearly $10 billion in sales in the first half of 2026, with Sotheby's reporting its best six-month stretch ever, up 58% from a year earlier, driven partly by newly wealthy tech buyers competing for rare fossils, art and watches, according to market reporting. Paleontologists have repeatedly warned that record-setting private sales put museum-quality fossils out of reach of research institutions.
