A skeleton of a 19ft-tall dinosaur nicknamed Misty by the family which found it has sold at auction for £400,000.
The remains of the diplodocus are destined to go on display at a mystery location after they were bought by an unnamed institution.
The 17-metre-long skeleton had been expected to fetch between £400,000 and £600,000 at the auction, which is thought to be the first of its kind in the UK.
Rupert van der Werff, of Summers Place Auctions in Billingshurst, West Sussex, described the lot as a “truly tremendous object”.
He said he was “absolutely thrilled” the skeleton had sold, adding: “I can’t tell you who bought it but it is going on public display.”
The diplodocus fossil was found almost completely intact in 2009 by the sons of palaeontologist Raimund Albersdoerfer near a quarry in Wyoming.
Mr Albersdoerfer had sent them to dig in the area to “get them off his back” and was astonished when they returned with an enormous bone.
Experts spent almost nine weeks digging the skeleton out of the ground, before it was sent to a laboratory in the Netherlands for preparations prior to its assembly in the UK.
Natural history author Errol Fuller said the skeleton was a “very rare item indeed”, with only a handful of examples “in the great museums of the world”.
“Even if you were lucky enough to find one in the first place, the digging out and the preparation involved is an enormous undertaking,” he said.
“The rock that it was embedded in would have been extremely hard to break away from the bones, and you couldn’t go at it with a sledge-hammer because the bones were vulnerable to breaking.”
It is not known whether the skeleton will end up at a British museum or be shipped overseas.
However, auctioneer James Rylands said: “We hope that Misty will get to go to a home where she’ll be enjoyed for another 150 million years.”
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Diplodocus Dinosaur Bones Sell For £400,000
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