By Julie Brener Davich

The king of dinosaurs has reclaimed his throne.

A 38-foot-long, 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus Rex named Gus sold for $50.1 million at Sotheby's Tuesday. It's an auction record for a fossilized dinosaur skeleton, beating the $44.6 million that Citadel founder Kenneth Griffin paid two years ago for Apex, a 150-million-year old Stegosaurus.

At least five bidders competed for the trophy in a bidding war that lasted 10 minutes. "Try a bigger bite," said auctioneer Phyllis Kao, trying to coax the next bid after $37 million. "It's a T.Rex, after all." It ultimately sold to an anonymous bidder on the phone.

Gus was discovered in South Dakota's fossil-rich Hell Creek Formation and excavated between 2021 and 2023, followed by three years of lab work to prep, assemble, and mount the bones. The historic find was named for the late Gary "Gus" Licking, who co-owned the 6,500-acre cattle ranch along with his wife, Dana. The excavation team camped out for five months each year to cover all the ground needed to recover every piece, which ended up being about 7,000 square feet.

Buyers around the world are acquiring fossils for themselves and displaying them in their homes and offices. Russell Crowe bought a Mosasaur skull for his kids from Leonardo DiCaprio for $35,000 in 2008 while the two were hanging out and drinking, the actor said on "The Howard Stern Show" in 2009. Nicolas Cage bought a Tyrannosaurus bataar skull at auction in 2007 for $276,000, but later found out it was illegally excavated from Mongolia and had to return it, Cage told "The Hollywood Reporter."

The U.S. is the only country where fossils excavated on private land can be sold, prompting a long-running debate about whether dinosaurs should be privately owned. Kirk Johnson, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History points out that commercial paleontologists are allowed to dig only on private land, whereas only museums are allowed to dig on federal land, so they're not competing; rather, it's an ecosystem. "There are about 50 T.Rexes right now, so it's not like Gus is the only one," said Johnson. "I do lament when a rare and new species comes up for auction and disappears, but a lot of dinosaurs are purchased by people who end up loaning or giving them to museums eventually. It is a nuanced thing."

The fossil market gained momentum after the 2020 sale of Stan, a T.Rex, for $31.8 million to the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism. The dinosaur is now on display at the city's natural history museum, which opened in 2025. Before that, the top price -- $8.4 million -- had stood for almost 30 years, since the sale of Sue, another T.Rex., now at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History.

The higher prices helped reshape the market, encouraging more fossils to come up for sale while giving commercial paleontologists more resources to fund costly and yearslong digs. Gus was excavated and assembled over five years by a team at Theropoda Expeditions, which painstakingly documented where each piece was found. The skeleton is 61% complete by bone count and 75% to 80% complete by bone mass, making it one of the most complete T. Rexes ever uncovered.

Other highlights in Sotheby's natural history sale included Allosaurus jaws with teeth that sold for $1.5 million and a 9 1/2 -foot-tall T.Rex leg, sold by the Black Hills Institute to fund its new natural history museum, for $1.8 million.

"The value of fossils has changed tremendously," says Peter Larson, head of the Black Hills Institute who dug up both Sue and Stan. "People are willing to pay what they're actually worth."

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 14, 2026 12:40 ET (16:40 GMT)