An almost intact skeleton of a woolly mammoth sold at auction on Saturday in the southeastern French city of Lyon for €548,250 ($644,234).

The lucky new owner of the ancient specimen is a French businessman whose company's logo is incidentally — a mammoth.

Read more: Should scientists bring back the woolly mammoth?

A mammoth auction

The skeleton stands 3.4 meters (11.2 feet) tall and is 5.3 meters long

It was painstakingly assembled in a walking position by the Aguttes auction house

The skeleton is composed of 80 percent of the animal's original bones — including its massive tusks

Prior to being sold, the skeleton's previous owner was a hunter who preserved the remains at his home

The skeleton was originally unearthed in Siberia 10 years ago

When they roamed the Earth... The Brachiosaurus Occasional Hollywood appearances aside, this guy retired from Earth 150 million years ago. One of the largest species to ever have walked our planet, this plant-eater must have had a staggering metabolism and large appetite to boot. It took just 10 to 15 years for its young to become full sized dinosaurs - some 13 meters tall and up to double that in length.

When they roamed the Earth... The Quagga What looks like a cross between a zebra and a horse is actually: a zebra. A South African sub-species of the common zebra to be more precise. Its indecision about its appearance certainly had nothing to do with its demise. Hunted down by settlers and forced to compete with domesticated animals for food, the Quagga had its final curtain in 1883.

When they roamed the Earth... Thylacine Is it a wolf? Is it a dog? Variously called a Tasmanian wolf or Tasmanian tiger, it was actually the largest meat-eating marsupial of recent times. A native of Australia, the animal was found on the island of Tasmania. But colonial settlers and the dogs they brought made sure the nocturnal hunter did not survive beyond the 1930s.

When they roamed the Earth... The Woolly Mammoth To survive the ice age, the Woolly Mammoth had a massive shaggy fur to keep it warm. In the exquisitely tempered halls of the Smithsonian Institution, it can obviously do with less. The woolly elephants, similar in size to their modern African counterparts, became extinct 5,000 years ago for eerily familiar reasons: climate change and (early) human hunters.

When they roamed the Earth... Psychopyge Elegans This ocean-dwelling creature once belonged to a super successful early group of animals that managed to stick around for a whopping 270,000 millenia. But it then disappeared in a mass extinction 250 million years ago. It's a fall from grace not unlike human celebrities: Elegans has begun a second career and has made it big on the internet - on fossil auction websites.

When they roamed the Earth... Homo floresiensis (aka "The Hobbit") This serious looking person was discovered in 2003 on an Indonesian island. Barely taller than a meter, he's about the height of Tolkien's Hobbit - hence the nickname. It probably is a species separate from modern humans. Both species shared the planet until very recently - before this hobbit waved his final good bye some 15,000 years ago.

When they roamed the Earth... The Indricotherium This greatgreat....grandparent of our modern rhinoceros was quite a bit larger than its descendant: Weighing up to 20 tons, this vegetarian needed a lot of greens to keep going and gobbled up the forests of central Asia. When the forests were gone (also for other reasons), so was this mega rhino. Oh, and that was 23 million years ago.

When they roamed the Earth... Antrodemus With this super evil casting photo, this guy should have made it into Spielberg's movie "Jurassic Park." He didn't. Instead, he struck terror in the western United States 150 million years ago. No wonder this large bipedal predator held a comfortable place at the top of the food chain.

When they roamed the Earth... The Passenger Pigeon Meet Martha, a Passenger Pigeon named after the wife of the first US president George Washington. Martha was the last of her kind and died in Cincinnati zoo in 1914. At home in North America, these pigeons disappeared when humans first cut down their forest habitat and then hunted them for food. Author: Ranty Islam



Proud new owner

The giant skeleton's new owner was identified as businessman Pierre-Etienne Bindschedler, the CEO of Soprema, a French waterproofing company based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg.

"We are going to display it in the lobby of our firm," Bindschedler told AFP. "I think we have enough room."

Read more: Dodo skeleton fetches thousands at auction

History in private hands: The skeleton sold at Saturday's auction is believed to be the largest mammoth skeleton to be privately owned, according to Aguttes. The auction house also noted that it was one of the few prehistoric specimens to have all the necessary authorizations to be legally exported from Russia.

Read more: Dinosaurs are extinct because asteroid hit the wrong spot

Watch video 03:29 Share Mammoths from Russia's Tundra Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2nyGl Mammoths from Russia's Tundra

Selling skeletons: Aguttes noted that auctions for mammoth skeletons are "very rare" and that the first complete mammoth skeleton was purchased at auction in 2006 for €150,000. Last December, Aguttes sold a dinosaur skeleton (an allosaurus named Kan) for a whopping €1,128,000.

Ancient giants: Woolly mammoths roamed North America and Siberia thousands of years ago. They came under threat from a warming climate and increased hunting, eventually dying off about 3,700 years ago. Their remains are frequently found in Siberia and northern regions of Russia, preserved in the frozen earth.

rs/aw (AFP, dpa)