The skeleton of a diplodocus dinosaur that
roamed what is now the United States some 160 million years ago was sold
for 400,000 pounds ($651,100) to an unidentified public institution at
an auction in Britain on Wednesday.
Misty, as the dinosaur was nicknamed,
will later be put on public display, the auctioneers said.
It was found
by the teenage sons of German dinosaur hunter Raimund Albersdoerfer in Dana
quarry in Wyoming, in the western United States.
The auctioneers, Summers
Place Auction, declined to disclose any details about the buyer, who wished to
remain anonymous.
"Finding a reasonably complete diplodocus of this size
is extremely rare," Errol Fuller, a natural history expert and curator of the
sale, told Reuters by telephone from West Sussex in England. "They are only ever
really found by luck."
The remains of the 17-metre (56 ft) female are
among the few more or less complete skeletons of diplodocus longus ever found.
The sons of the German paleontologist came across Misty's fossilised bones after
their father sent them to hunt another area because they were distracting him
from his own search.
"The children wanted to find their own bits and
pieces, so he sent them where he thought they might find a few fragments but
nothing really important, and they came back saying that they had found this
enormous bone," Fuller said.
Since the discovery was made on private
rather than Federal land, it was possible for the German paleontologist to
remove the fossils from the United States. They were sent to Holland, where they
were cleaned and assembled, and then to the UK, where Misty was sold to the
owner who is about to take her to her new home.
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