150-million-year-old Jurassic Dryosaurus skeleton may fetch 500k dollar at auction

New York, March 21 (ANI): A rare dinosaur skeleton as much as 150-million years old is expected to fetch 500,000 million dollars at the Natural History Auction in Manhattan.

The Jurassic Dryosaurus carcass has been put under the hammer by I.M. Chait Gallery at 267 Fifth Avenue.

The 9-foot-long fossil, which took two years to be assembled back to its shape, had been unearthed by Western Paleontological Laboratories in Lehi, Utah in 1993.

The relic is now being sold for economic reasons and is believed to be the only second Dryosaurus skeleton in existence.

"It's great for a private collection. But I'm hoping it goes to a museum or some institution," the New York Daily News quoted Josh Chait, the gallery's director of operations as saying.

Rod Scheetz, a dinosaur expert at Brigham Young University in Utah, said the skeleton was "the best specimen I have ever seen."

Other attractions at the auction will also include a skeleton of a 7-foot-high baby wooly mammoth and a giant marine lizard, which are both expected to cost bidders around 100,000 dollars.

A skeleton of a saber-toothed tiger was recently sold for 250,0000 dollars by the gallery. (ANI)