Sotheby’s Big T. Rex auction raises concerns that hype and wealth are turning science on its head

Forget selling Of the century. Sotheby’s auction house is preparing to sell this era. On July 14, direct bidding will open for various products ExcavationsBut the piece de resistance is piece 20, a rare piece that is 67 million years old Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton.

The specimen – dubbed Goss – has been described as one of the largest and most complete T-Rex ever found. Goss is expected to fetch up to $30 million and will go to the highest bidder, whether a public museum or a private collector. The latter has played an increasingly prominent role in purchasing fossils, through auction houses, she said Paleontologistscontributing to this trend by building hype. But when private collectors swoop in and buy up Fossils at auction As luxury assets, these parts of history are effectively lost to science.

By almost any measure, Gus is a big deal. Sotheby’s boasts in its description that the specimen, which was discovered on a farm in South Dakota, includes “an incredible 183 fossil bone elements” making it “approximately 61% complete by bone count.” The fossil remains were mounted in a custom steel organ along with replicas of the lost bones. The result is a reconstructed skeleton as if it was on hot pursuit, its mouth full of dagger teeth ready to tear apart prey.

“It seems to be an amazing specimen,” says Thomas Holtz, a dinosaur specialist at the University of Maryland. He says the completeness of the skeleton and high quality of the bones make Gus “of scientific interest.”

Gus is the latest major dinosaur fossil to come up for auction in the United States. This trend began in earnest in 1997 when Sotheby’s auction house sold Sue, The most complete T-Rex registered. That specimen sold for about $8.4 million, the largest amount ever paid for a fossil at auction at the time.

“Before Sue’s sale, there were no laws regarding who owned the fossils,” says Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman and head of Sotheby’s science and natural history department. “There was no real value attributed to them.” In many other countries the state owns the fossils. But Sue’s lawsuits make clear that in the United States, whoever owns the land also owns any fossils found on it, Hatton explains. The market has boomed since then.

But while Sue went to a scientific institution — the Field Museum in Chicago — in recent years, ultra-rich individuals have been snapping up dinosaur fossils at auction for their own collections, leading paleontologists to worry about the fate of rare specimens. Tech entrepreneur Dan O’Dowd owns a T-Rex Samson called. And he’s not the only private collector who owns the Tyrant Lizard King. A study published in 2025 found that there are more fossils T-Rex In private collections than in public funds.

It’s not just T-Rex It ends up in personal safes. In 2024, Sotheby’s sold A Stegosaurus Apex has been named to hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin for a record sum of $44.6 million. Last year, the auction house sold the only known event Ceratosaurus In the world to an unknown buyer for $30.5 million. These examples highlight another trend: as prices rise, museums cannot compete at auctions.

Courtesy of Matthew Sherman/Sotheby’s