On July 14, Sotheby’s in New York auctioned off an item to an anonymous buyer for 50.1 million dollars. Was it yet another precious work of art doomed to be locked away in the vaults of the rich? Or perhaps it was an ultra-rare luxury car or another mansion in Hollywood Hills? No, it was one of the largest and most complete T-rex skeletons discovered to date.
Nicknamed “Gus”, the skeleton is about 67 million years old and was painstakingly excavated and assembled over three years after the fossil’s discovery in South Dakota. The auctioning off of this precious piece of our planet’s natural history is nothing less than the rich denying knowledge to humanity. As per one scientist, “A fossil not in a recognised museum collection cannot be studied and is therefore lost to research”, while another agreed that “If a dinosaur like this fetches tens of millions of dollars at auction, then there’s little that scientists or museums or universities can do. Those prices can only be paid by the super-rich”.
Unfortunately, the auctioning off of Gus represents a new and disturbing trend. In 2025, Ken Griffin, one of the richest and most powerful finance capitalists in the world, bought a 150 million year old stegosaurus fossil for $45 million. Not content with hoarding artistic masterpieces, the rich are now hoarding irreplaceable pieces recording the history of life on earth. And for what? It’s not like these billionaires know how to do anything except put on a suit and make money (aka exploiting the workers of the world for profit, interest and rent). There is so much more we could learn about our planet and the cosmos only if these billionaires were overthrown!
– Sakif K., Pointe-Claire
