Meet Gus, the legendary T. rex that was sold for over 50 MILLION dollars

Meet Gus, the legendary dinosaur who just broke an incredible world record!

He is one of the most complete and well-preserved T. rexes ever found and it’s no surprise that he broke the world record for most expensive dinosaur sold at auction.

How expensive, you ask?

Well, after an intense bidding war between 7 parties it was finally sold for $50.1 million (the equivalent of £37.5 million or €43.9 million).

To put it into perspective, with this amount of money you could buy 100,000 video game consoles, 2 million Barbie dolls or 1 million LEGO sets!

WOW.

Gus was named after the cattle rancher Gary “Gus” Licking, whose land the extraordinary dinosaur was discovered on.

So what makes him so valuable?

First of all, he is a representative of probably the most iconic dinosaur species EVER, but also his size is incredible and he’s still in great condition for being millions of years old.

Gus is one of the largest and most complete T. rex skeletons ever to be discovered, only rivalled by dinosaurs like “Sue” (housed at The Field Museum in Chicago) and “Stan” (displayed at the Natural History Museum in Abu Dhabi).

This is Sue, by the way. Isn’t she amazing?

Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Evolutionnumber9

Sue – who like Gus was unearthed in South Dakota, though back in 1990 – is still the most complete T. rex skeleton, having around 90% of her original bones.

Scotty, on the other hand, may be the largest T. rex skeleton, pushing 13 metres from snout to tail tip:

Credit: Amanda Kelley

Gus was unearthed in Harding County, South Dakota, USA, in a region that is well-known as a dinosaur-fossil hotspot. If you’re looking for dinosaurs, that is the place to be!

Over the course of 3 summers in 2021–2023, Gus’s bones were carefully collected and cleaned by fossil hunter Thomas Heitkamp and his team.

Credit: Courtesy of Sotheby's

We don’t know who Gus’s purchaser is, as he wants to remain anonymous at least for now. So we can’t help but wonder, will we ever get to see Gus on public display, in a museum?

Fingers (and tiny arms) crossed!

Credit: Sotheby's / Matthew Sherman