London: An exceptionally rare full skeleton of a diplodocus dinosaur has sold for an eye-popping 400,000 pounds at an auction in the UK.
The 17 metre-long female Diplodocus skeleton, nicknamed `Misty`, is believed to be one of only six relatively complete specimens in the world.
The 150-million-year-old fossil carried an estimate of 400,000 to 600,000 pounds as it went under the hammer at Summers Place Auctions in West Sussex, yesterday.
Rupert van der Werff, from the auction house, said it was a "truly tremendous object".
"I`m absolutely thrilled. It has been an awful lot of work and a very exciting project, and to finally get to this final conclusion - we are delighted.
"I can`t tell you who bought it but it is going on public display," Werff was quoted as saying by `The BBC`.
The skeleton was discovered in 2009 in the US state of Wyoming by the children of famed German paleontologist Raimund Albersdoerfer.
It was then prepped at a leading fossil laboratory in Holland before being assembled in the UK.
Before the auction, the Natural History Museum, in London, said it would not be bidding for the dinosaur despite its own diplodocus only being a cast of one displayed in Pittsburgh.
That skeleton cast is itself made up of two different diplodocuses.
Diplodocus, one of the largest animals to have ever walked the Earth, was a large plant-eating dinosaur with tremendously elongated neck and a whip-like tail.
