Sotheby’s Big T. Rex Auction Raises Concerns Hype and Wealth Are Upending Science

Forget the sale of the century. The auction house Sotheby’s is gearing up for the sale of the epoch. On July 14 it will open live bidding on assorted fossils, but the pièce de résistance is lot 20, a rare 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton.

The specimen—dubbed Gus—is billed as one of the largest, most complete T. rexes ever found. Gus is expected to fetch up to $30 million and will go to the highest bidder, whether public museum or private collector. The latter have played an increasingly prominent role in buying fossils, with auction houses, according to paleontologists, contributing to the trend by building hype. But when private collectors swoop in and buy fossils at auction as luxury assets, those pieces of history are effectively lost to science.

By nearly all accounts, Gus is a big deal. In its description, Sotheby’s boasts that the specimen, which was discovered on a ranch in South Dakota, comprises “an incredible 183 fossil bone elements” making it “approximately 61% complete by bone count.” The fossil remains have been mounted in a custom steel armature along with replicas of the missing bones. The result is a reconstructed skeleton posed as if in hot pursuit, its mouth full of dagger teeth ready to tear into prey.

“It does seem to be a spectacular specimen,” says Thomas Holtz, a tyrannosaur specialist at the University of Maryland. The completeness of the skeleton and the high quality of the bone make Gus “scientifically significant,” he says.

Gus is the latest major dinosaur fossil to go up for sale at auction in the US. That trend began in earnest in 1997 when Sotheby’s auctioned Sue, the most complete T. rex on record. That specimen sold for roughly $8.4 million—the most money ever paid for a fossil at auction at the time.

“Before Sue was sold, there were no laws about who owned fossils. There was no value truly ascribed to them,” says Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman and head of the science and natural history department at Sotheby’s. In many other countries the state owns the fossils. But court cases around Sue clarified that in the US, whoever owns the land also owns whatever fossils are on it, Hatton explains. The market has been booming ever since.

But whereas Sue went to a scientific institution—the Field Museum in Chicago—in recent years ultrarich individuals have been snapping up dinosaur fossils at auctions for their private collections, prompting paleontologists to be concerned about the fate of rare specimens. Tech entrepreneur Dan O’Dowd owns a T. rex called Samson. And he’s not the only private collector to own a tyrant lizard king. A study published in 2025 found that there are more fossils of T. rex in private collections than there are in public trusts.

It’s not just T. rex that’s ending up in personal coffers. In 2024, Sotheby’s sold a Stegosaurus named Apex to hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin for the record-setting sum of $44.6 million. And last year the auction house sold the only known juvenile Ceratosaurus in the world to an anonymous buyer for $30.5 million. These examples highlight another trend: As prices soar, museums simply cannot compete at auction.

Courtesy of Matthew Sherman/Sotheby’s