67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus skeleton heads to auction in U.S.

The auction house Sotheby’s plans to hold the sale on July 14.

The fossil is considered one of the most complete Tyrannosaurus skeletons known. It was nicknamed “Gus” after Gary “Gus” Licking, the South Dakota ranch owner on whose land the prehistoric predator’s fossilized remains were discovered in 2021.

In 2024, Kenneth Griffin, founder of Citadel, purchased a Stegosaurus skeleton known as “Apex” at a Sotheby’s auction in New York for a record-breaking $44.6 million. The fossil had originally been estimated to sell for between $4 million and $6 million. Apex is now on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

The first dinosaur skeleton sold at auction was also a Tyrannosaurus. In 1997, Sotheby’s auctioned the famous fossil known as “Sue,” widely regarded as the most complete Tyrannosaurus skeleton ever discovered. The specimen was named for paleontologist Susan Hendrickson, who found it in South Dakota in April 1990 while exploring land owned by Maurice Williams, a member of the Sioux tribe. Williams considered his lands “wasteful” and did not suspect they hid a real treasure. The fossil was eventually purchased by Chicago’s Field Museum for $8.4 million.

Earlier, Qazinform News Agency reported that scientists in Thailand had identified a new species of giant dinosaur that lived around 120 million years ago, marking a major breakthrough in Southeast Asian paleontology.