Laura Verdina investigates…The auction house Sotheby’s estimated that Gus would go for up to $30 million, with bids starting at $19 million.
In actual fact, Gus went for much more than that: the highest bidder bought him for $50.1 million (with fees).
The stegosaurus which previously held the record was estimated to be worth $6 million, but ended up going for $44.6 million.
“The important point to keep in mind is that every new specimen of a T. rex is a test of everything we previously knew about T. rex.
The high-value sales of specimens like Gus the Tyrannosaurus rex price museums out of the market.
Gus, a T. Rex skeleton excavated from the Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota over the course of three years, was auctioned off on July 14th 2026 for a staggering $50.1m (£37.4m). This makes him the most expensive dinosaur skeleton to ever be sold: but should we be selling crucial specimens like him to private collectors, rendering it impossible to do scientific study on them? Laura Verdina investigates…
The auction house Sotheby’s estimated that Gus would go for up to $30 million, with bids starting at $19 million. In actual fact, Gus went for much more than that: the highest bidder bought him for $50.1 million (with fees). The stegosaurus which previously held the record was estimated to be worth $6 million, but ended up going for $44.6 million.
Like many other dinosaur skeletons that have been previously sold, Gus is now privately owned - this makes it impossible for any credible scientific research to be done on him, as private ownership limits researchers from having free access for repeated study. Given how few fossils like this exist, these private sales are a dramatic loss for the progression of scientific inquiry.
“When fossils are sold at top dollar outside of the hands of science, we lose valuable data that would help us understand the actual biology of extinct species like T. rex. It's a profound loss when a dinosaur is sold only for its value as a millionaire's trophy”, Thomas D. Carr, a vertebrate paleontologist, told The Naked Scientists. Carr has studied the commercial exploitation of dinosaur fossils and, in 2025, published a study which found that there were more privately held T. rex fossils than there were publicly held ones.
“The important point to keep in mind is that every new specimen of a T. rex is a test of everything we previously knew about T. rex. So even a single bone all the way up to a complete skeleton has the potential to bring new insights, overturn previous hypotheses, and support others. Also, the fossil is available for repeated study by scientists who either want to test previous hypotheses, or study a fossil using new and innovative techniques that were not previously available or conceived of”, he elaborated.
Sadly, even if his owner were to be so benevolent as to loan him to an institution for public viewing, Gus has already been mounted in a way that makes him ineligible for scientific study. These private sales are not only a loss for science, but also a loss for the public. By treating these rare specimens in the same respect as one would treat any other commodity to be sold, we lose the cultural value that an object like this could provide if it were instead displayed in a museum.
“[Dinosaur specimens] are increasingly being sold like pieces of art to private individuals who often consider them as assets rather than natural heritage. The high-value sales of specimens like Gus the Tyrannosaurus rex price museums out of the market. Museums simply do not have the resources to pay millions of dollars for individual specimens”, commented Professor Susannah Maidment, who is a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London.
By auctioning off biological exemplars so freely, scientific discoveries that have yet to be made are escaping the realm of public knowledge. We may never see Gus again - perhaps, he will be permanently stashed away in the living room of an anonymous billionaire. But it would be preferable if, like the previous record-holding Stegosaurus, Gus was loaned out to the world’s greatest museums by his wealthy owner.
