Auction house says bones of allosaurus named Kan, bought by unnamed French buyer, will go on public display

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

A nearly complete dinosaur skeleton has sold for more than €1m at auction in the eastern French city of Lyon.

The bones of the allosaurus, a ferocious carnivore named Kan whose species went extinct 135m years ago, fetched €1.1m (£900,000) on Saturday, the Aguttes auction house said.

Discovered in 2013 in the Jurassic-era Morrison Formation in the western US, the specimen is more than 7.5 metres (25f) long and 2.5 metres tall.

The unnamed buyer is French and the skeleton will remain in France and go on public display, an Aguttes spokesman said, without revealing when or where the unveiling would take place.

The buyer, who made the purchase by telephone, “wants to keep the location a surprise”, the spokesman said.

The skeleton is three-quarters complete and shows Kan in a running position with its mouth open.

The auction house described the beast as “the archetype of the great predators of the Jurassic era”.