Allosaurus Skeleton: Dinosaur Auction Could Bring In Nearly $1 Million, Official Says

An Allosaurus skeleton is expected to be sold at an upcoming dinosaur auction later this year and the rare skeleton could sell for nearly $1 million. The nearly complete skeleton of a juvenile Allosaurus dinosaur specimen — which is said to be about 155 million-years-old — will be auctioned on November 25 in the U.K. According to the BBC. The auction will take place at the Summers Place Auctions.

Rupert van der Werff, director of Summers Palace Auctions, gave the following statement to media outlets regarding the highly-anticipated dinosaur auction.

“The Allosaurus, together with the T-Rex, had become the quintessentially large, carnivorous dinosaur in western popular culture. Given the size of this Allosaurus it also adds the cute factor and may not just attract interest from museums but could also be the wow factor in a luxurious living room.”

The Allosaurus skeleton is about nine-feet-long, and is said to be the first predatory dinosaur skeleton to be sold in Britain. As mentioned above, the remains belong to a young Allosaurus, which is one of the largest predators that have ever existed. According to Live Science, Allosaurus could reach up to 43 feet in length and stand 15- to 16-feet tall. One of the few carnivorous dinosaurs that exceeded the size of the Allosaurus was the Tyrannosaurus Rex, which lived 80 million years after its existence.

The skeleton was found in a quarry in Wyoming and still maintains an articulated jaw with a number of sharp teeth intact.

“It’s half the size of an adult, so it’s more manageable and would fit in a lot of homes, as well as private institutions,” van der Werff said. “We could see it going to either a museum or a collector. We are pleased to be offering this skeleton to our global customers, and expect a lot of European and Asian interest in this.”

The excavation to unearth this dinosaur was led by paleontologist Raimund Albersdörfer, and he and his two teenage sons are responsible for its discovery. Once the the boys found a huge dinosaur bone, a team of paleontologist dug up the rest and identified which dinosaur species to which they belonged before deciding to proceed with the costly work.

The impressive dinosaur bones had been excavated in the U.S., and were prepared in the Netherlands and were finally assembled — like a puzzle — in the U.K.

[Image via Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images News]