T. rex Skeleton Gus Heads to Sotheby's Auction With Up to $30 Million Estimate

A T. rex skeleton named Gus will be auctioned Tuesday at Sotheby's in New York with a presale estimate of up to $30 million, Cnn reported. The specimen was found on the 6,500-acre ranch of the late Gary Licking in Harding County, South Dakota, within the Hell Creek Formation.

Thomas Heitkamp, founder of Theropoda Expeditions, met Licking by chance while the rancher checked a watering trough. Heitkamp's team located the bones in 2021 after a year of hiking the property and completed excavation over three field seasons from 2021 to 2023. Licking died before the work finished.

The team hand-dug roughly 7,000 square feet of ground during the five months each year when it was not frozen. Gus measures 38 feet long and 12.5 feet tall, with a 54-inch skull. It contains 183 fossil bone elements, rated 61 percent complete by bone count and 75 to 80 percent complete by mass.

The skeleton includes the wishbone, a complete pelvis, and both feet. Its skull preserves about 82 percent of the original bones. The specimen shows bite marks and healed fractures. No scientific papers have been published on Gus.

Sotheby's said Gus contains no material from the nearby Stan skeleton and was prepared without casts from that specimen. Stan sold for $31.8 million in 2020.

Stan is about 70 percent complete by bone count. Only one other known specimen has two well-represented feet. Stuart Sumida, president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, said private ownership prevents formal study because the society's code requires specimens to remain in publicly accessible collections.

Sumida noted that once mounted, a fossil cannot be examined in the same detail as loose elements still in matrix. He added that scans do not substitute for access to the original bones. Heitkamp stated that several independent researchers have viewed Gus informally.