By Abby Schultz

A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton nicknamed "Gus" sold for a record-breaking $50.1 million to an anonymous bidder at Sotheby's on Tuesday in New York.

The auction house estimated that the approximately 67-million-year-old, 38-foot-long, 12 1/2 -foot tall carnivore would sell for between $20 million and $30 million -- the highest estimate for a dinosaur at auction.

Before today's sale, hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin had paid the highest price for any type of dinosaur skeleton at auction -- $44.6 million for a Stegosaurus named "Apex," in July 2024. Apex has been on a four-year loan at the American Museum of Natural History in New York since December 2024.

Bidding for the enormous beast -- said to be the largest and most complete skeleton to be offered at a public auction -- opened at $17 million, and continued for just under 10 minutes between a bidder on the phone with Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby's vice chairman and worldwide head, Science & Natural History, and six other bidders. After every countering bid, Hatton was back with a new bid that was $1 million to $2 million above the last until the bidding reached $43 million, before fees. Sotheby's Tuesday auction of "Natural History including Gus Rex," is taking place at the auction house's Madison Avenue headquarters in New York.

Gus is named for Gary "Gus" Licking, a cattle rancher from Harding County, South Dakota, who found teeth and small bone fragments on a 6,500-acre parcel. Suspecting the area might hold dinosaur treasure, he sought the expertise of commercial paleontologist Thomas Heitkamp, to explore the property. The area turned out to be home to remnants of this giant T. rex.

Heitkamp and his team took three years to excavate it, from 2021-23. Licking died just a year into the excavation, according to Sotheby's. The auction house was involved with the excavation, preparation, and mounting of Gus "to fully document the entire process."

Sotheby's first sale of a major dinosaur was in 1997, with the auctioning of a T. rex skeleton dubbed "Sue." The Field Museum in Chicago, with the help of corporate and private donations, prevailed in the bidding, ultimately paying $8.4 million. Sue was considered the most complete T. rex to be sold, having 250 of 380 known bones.

Gus has 183 fossilized bone "elements," and is considered 61% complete by bone count. The bones represent 75% to 80% of the animal's complete bone mass. Several of its skeletal components, including the skull -- which has 82% of its original bones -- are considered to be "well-represented."

The next-priciest dinosaur skeleton on record after Apex is " Stan," which sold for $32 million, including fees, in October 2020 at Christie's in New York. The buyer was the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism, which placed it in the city's natural history museum.

Write to Abby Schultz at abby.schultz@barrons.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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July 14, 2026 12:58 ET (16:58 GMT)