Would You Pay $50m For This Dinosaur Skeleton?

There are a few major signs out there that someone has too much money. Cocaine use. Joining a woo-woo cult. Putting designer clothes on your pets. Sucking up to a crooked politician to influence legislative changes. My favourite, however, is buying dinosaur skeletons. Everyone does it. If Nic Cage is into it, you know it’s cool. Well, a hot new set of bones has entered the villa and become the most expensive ever sold at auction.

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A 67 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex has been sold for $50.1 million this week at an auction in Sotheby’s, New York. The specimen, nicknamed Gus, was discovered in 2021 on a remote ranch in South Dakota. He’s 12 feet tall and comes with over 60% of its bones. That’s a pretty impressive amount of recovery for a skeleton this old and large. Sotheby’s said he was one of “the most complete” T-Rexes ever discovered. That may be why he cost so much. Such beauties are also usually snapped up by museums or never even make it to auction.

But who bought Gus? We don’t know yet. Someone with very deep pockets, obviously. The last time a major dino skeleton went on sale, it was bought by Ken Griffin, the hedge fund managing billionaire asshole. He at least had the decency to loan his dinosaur out to the American Museum of Natural History for four years. I’m all in favour of rich losers using their money for stuff that isn’t evil, but as with the high art market, I hate how this is now the denizen of the ultra-rich and that the natural beauties of our planet are just commodities for people looking for ways not to pay their taxes. Are we getting a full Jurassic Park situation out of this? Or just an endless measuring competition between billionaires over whose bones are bigger?