Art & Design|T. Rex Fossil Sells for $50.1 Million, Putting the King Back On Top

Sotheby’s sold a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil at auction on Tuesday for $50.1 million, with fees, topping records set in recent years amid a surging market for prehistoric specimens.

The towering skeleton, nicknamed Gus, was sold after a nearly 10-minute bidding war. The auction house declined to name the buyer, or even reveal the person’s location.

“Try a bigger bite,” said Phyllis Kao, an auctioneer at Sotheby’s during the live sale in New York, which included seven bidders. “It’s a T. rex after all.”

The sale allowed the T. rex to reclaim its title as the most valuable on the commercial fossil market. Two years ago, it had been unseated — by an herbivore, no less — when a stegosaurus fossil was auctioned for $44.6 million.

The record continues a trend of climbing prices for dinosaur bones, which has delighted commercial fossil hunters while drawing criticism from paleontologists at universities and museums who worry that they are being priced out of the market.

The 12½-foot-tall T. rex fossil was excavated from private land in fossil-rich South Dakota in a multiyear process that started in 2021. At that time, the fossil industry had just been supercharged by the sale of another T. rex skeleton — known as Stan — which sold for $31.8 million, driving fantasies of buried treasures out West.