This T. Rex Fossil Could Fetch the Largest Sum of Any Dinosaur Ever Auctioned. Scientists Worry They’ll Lose the Chance to Study It

Bids on “Gus” will start at $19 million, a steep price for public institutions. Specimens in private collections can be harder for researchers to examine, and they’re practically impossible to include in studies in top-tier scientific journals

Margherita Bassi | Daily Correspondent

July 13, 2026 4:13 p.m.

Share

Copy linkEmailSMSFacebookXRedditLinkedInBlueskyPrint

Add as preferred source

Something extraordinary is going on sale tomorrow: a gigantic, 67-million-year-old dinosaur skeleton. Sotheby’s will auction off one of the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex specimens ever found. However, some researchers are concerned that the scientifically valuable fossil specimen might end up in private hands, which could make it more challenging to study.

The auction house estimates the value of the T. rex—dubbed “Gus” after the owner of the land it was found on—at between $20 million and $30 million, the most ever estimated for a dinosaur, according to a statement. Bids will start at $19 million.

Gus was unearthed in Harding County, South Dakota, on the property of cattle rancher Gary “Gus” Licking, for whom the fossil was named. Licking, who died in 2002, had been finding teeth and pieces of bone for years and finally called in Thomas Heitkamp, president of the commercial paleontology company Theropoda Expeditions, and his colleagues to take a look. The team excavated the dinosaur in the summers of 2021 through 2023 and then spent the next three years in the lab separating the fossilized bones from surrounding rock and piecing them together.

The skeleton consists of 183 fossil bone elements, which represent around 63 percent of a T. rex’s total bone count and up to 80 percent of the ancient animal’s bone mass. It’s about 38 feet long and 12.5 feet tall. What’s more, Gus has scientifically valuable features, including fractured and healed bones as well as bite marks on the skull, which may have been left behind by meat-eating scavengers who snacked on its body after it died.

So, who might bid on the T. rex on July 14?

“The dinosaur market today is broader than most people realize—and widening,” Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s vice chairman and worldwide head of science and natural history, tells Artnet’s Min Chen. “Interest now comes not only from U.S.-based museums and private collectors, but also major international museums, foundations and individuals creating destinations of their own.”

However, Gus’ sale is concerning to some people who question whether private collectors should be able to acquire such scientifically important specimens.

In 2024, hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin bought a Stegosaurus skeleton named “Apex” at auction for $44.6 million—about nine times as much as estimated by Sotheby’s. At the time, it broke the record for the most expensive fossil ever sold at auction. Apex is on long-term loan at the American Museum of Natural History, where visitors can see the specimen.

Still, privately owned fossils are difficult for scientists to study, even with willing owners. Top-tier scientific journals typically refuse to publish studies based on specimens in private collections, reports the BBC’s Esme Stallard. That’s because the specimens need to be available for further study as new research emerges, which can’t be guaranteed if they’re in an individual’s hands.

“What happens [if] that person gets bored of them, dies, gets divorced? And there have been many cases where specimens have been in private collections, and there’s been a scientific description of them, and [that has] gone in the skip,” Susannah Maidment, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, tells the BBC. “So, it’s actually just not science anymore.”

Scott Persons, curator of natural history at the South Carolina State Museum, tells NPR’s Chandelis Duster and James Doubek that potential buyers wealthy enough to purchase Gus could contribute their funds to paleontology research.

“A sum like [Gus’ estimated value] could endow a research program at a public museum of your choosing,” he says. “That would pay for a career’s worth of fieldwork, the discovery of whole new species and the public exhibition of the findings.”

Sotheby’s Hatton, however, offers a different perspective to the Australian Financial Review’s Zehra Munir. “These sales are super important because they are helping us find fossils that would otherwise be lost to everyone,” she says.

Margherita Bassi | Read More

Margherita Bassi is a freelance journalist and trilingual storyteller. Her work has appeared in publications including BBC Travel, Discover magazine, Live Science, Atlas Obscura and Hidden Compass.