The skeleton of a ferocious dinosaur called Kan was sold at a French auction this week for 1.1 million euros (£900,000), AFP reports.
The bones belonged to an Allosaurus, which was a carnivorous dinosaur whose species went extinct about 135 million years ago. The name basically means "different lizard" and Kan is about 7.5 metres long and 2.5 metres tall, though other individuals reached over 12 metres in length.
The AFP said Aguttes auction house described the dinosaur remains as "the archetype of the great predators of the Jurassic Era."
An unnamed buyer purchased the skeleton over the phone, according to Aguttes, and it will go on public display somewhere in France. However, the buyer is being secretive about where or when that will happen.
"[They want] to keep the location a surprise," a spokesman for Aguttes told AFP.
The sale fell just short of the 1.3 million euros which someone paid for another Allosaurus skeleton in 2010 at Sotheby's in Paris.
Allosaurus was one of the earliest dinosaur discoveries
There are plenty of Allosaurus fossils because it was one of the first dinosaur species discovered. At least 46 of the 74 dinosaurs found in Utah's Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry , a site containing the densest concentration of Jurassic dinosaur bones in the world, are an Allosaurus, according to the US Bureau of Land Management.
However, Allosaurus bones have been found all over the world, in places such as Portugal, Siberia, and Tanzania.
They could reach 1,500 kg in weight and according to one study, they lived up to 28 years old.
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