How much should a dinosaur cost?
Scientific American · LC · trust 41/100
Fossils are selling for tens of millions of dollars at auction. But why are the ancient creatures the hot new thing for the ultrarich?
The 67-million-year-old skeleton, which was found during an excavation on private land in South Dakota and comprises 183 fossil bones, representing up to 80 percent of the animal’s total bone mass.
How much is a Tyrannosaurus rex worth? If you ask the person who bought “Gus,” one of the most complete T. rex skeletons ever found, last month, the answer is $50.1 million .
The price is eye-popping, but it underscores the rising value of dinosaur fossils—and the threat these prices pose to paleontologists.
Fossils didn't always command such steep prices. At least until the late 1990s, dinosaur skeletons didn’t cost more than $1 million, says Kirk Johnson, Sant director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. “If you’re a paleontologist or a scientist, $1 million seems like a huge amount of money. So suddenly [$50 million], like, your brain explodes,” Johnson says. Still, it’s the consequence of dinosaur bones being treated—and sold—like fine art.
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“Gus” is the most expensive dinosaur ever sold, but the previous record holder, “Apex” the Stegosaurus, sold for around $44.6 million in 2024. The first fossil sold at action—and the first to sell for more than $1 million—was “Sue” the T. rex : in 1997 it sold to Chicago’s Field Museum for $8.3 million.
Each fossil is unique, says Craig Kissick, vice president of natural history at Heritage Auctions. Unlike more common collectables, such as coins or baseball cards, “there is not one dinosaur bone that is the same as another,” Kissick says. “Any collectible category that is not graded and commoditized is going to have its own unique set of rules.”
As a result, fossils are appraised based on what auctioneers know—the completeness of a fossil and the price that the last one sold for.
“If you talk to the auction houses and say, ‘What do you think this is worth?’ they’ll say, ‘I don’t know what it’s worth, but I can tell you how much it’s sold for,’” Johnson says. “When Apex the Stegosaurus sold for $44 million, Stegosauruses [became] worth $44 million.”
Who exactly buys these fossils is sometimes a mystery. Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin bought Apex and then loaned the dinosaur to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Another sold-at-auction specimen, the $32-million “Stan” the T. rex, disappeared from public view for years before reappearing at a natural history museum in Abu Dhabi .
“The people buying the expensive dinosaurs are not necessarily hardcore natural history collectors or museums. They’re hedge fund managers. They’re celebrities,” Kissick says. “If you’ve already got five homes and 10 cars, what’s next? Well, maybe a dinosaur.”
Apex the Stegosaurus fossil, on display at Sotheby's in 2024.
Like fine art, some economists believe fossils are more than unique collectibles and status symbols—they can be alternative investments . The benefit is that “their value may be less prone to volatility” compared to stocks, says Simon Condliffe, an economist at West Chester University. That said, they don’t appreciate the same way shares do. Comparing the prices of the most recently sold T. rexes to returns on the S&P 500 for the same period, “the S&P 500 wins comfortably,” Condliffe says.
Increasingly high fossil prices are a problem for paleontology, says Kristina Curry Rogers, a vertebrate paleontologist at Macalester College, because they “encourage the perception that dinosaur fossils are investment assets rather than irreplaceable pieces of our collective natural heritage.”
They also encourage fossil hunters—commercial paleontologists and hobbyists looking to turn a profit on dinosaur bones—no matter the cost to science.
Fossil hunters aren’t a new phenomenon, Johnson says, and many work with museums, academics and collectors to find dinosaur bones ethically and legally. Cary Woodruff, curator of vertebrate paleontology at Frost Science in Miami, says he has a “wonderful relationship” with Jason Cooper, the paleontologist who found Apex, for example. Sue the T. rex was found during a commercial excavation trip, too.
“There have been so many amazing fossils that, frankly, just would not have been found” without commercial fossil hunters, Woodruff says. But the work isn’t charity. “A lot of them are very nice people, but in that simple respect of what they’re doing—digging to sell—they are not benefiting the scientific discipline,” Woodruff says.
Increasing payouts for fossils present an ethical problem, researchers say. They could incentivize poaching, illegally excavating fossils from federal land or fabricating information about a fossil to buyers.
“If you’re a land manager, you’re like, ‘I'm going to be watching for illegal digs now because there’s a $50-million dinosaur out there for somebody,’” Johnson says.
Sue the T. rex on display at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
“As [we see] these higher and higher dollar values, we’re seeing more crimes,” says Woodruff, citing lawsuits and even the brandishing of weapons at dig sites. Rogers says she’s personally witnessed fossil poaching from active excavation sites—and later seen those…
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