A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton was sold at auction in the U.S. for a record amount
A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton nicknamed “Gus” was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York for a record $50.1 million, marking the highest price ever paid for a dinosaur fossil.
The artifact, estimated to be about 67 million years old, was discovered in 2021 in South Dakota. The skeleton, which stands over 4 meters tall, consists of more than 60% reconstructed bones, and the skull and ribs show healed injuries from battles sustained during the dinosaur’s lifetime. The buyer’s name has not yet been disclosed.
The previous record was held by the Apex Stegosaurus, which sold for $44.6 million in 2024. Cassandra Hatton, head of science and natural history at Sotheby’s, noted that such auctions are beneficial to science because they stimulate public interest and museum attendance.
Despite paleontologists’ concerns about valuable specimens being turned into luxury items for private collectors, experts hope that Gus will also end up on museum display. For example, the new owner of the Apex stegosaurus, billionaire Kenneth Griffin, has loaned it to the American Museum of Natural History for four years.
Source: BBC.
Previously, an international team of scientists developed the DinoTracker app, which uses artificial intelligence to identify dinosaurs based on their tracks left tens of millions of years ago. The system is capable of analyzing the shape of a footprint and identifying its unique characteristics, even if the dinosaur itself was never nearby.
Japanese scientists on the island of Hokkaido have discovered new geological evidence of an asteroid impact that may have been one of the causes of the mass extinction of dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. This is the first such confirmation for Japan, adding new data to the global scientific picture of this ancient catastrophe. The research spanned more than a decade.
