Meet Little Al, the first predatory dinosaur skeleton to go under the hammer in Britain. Almost 3 metres long, Al is a juvenile Allosaurus, one of the most ferocious of all dinosaur predators, and his complete skeleton had been expected to fetch between 拢300,000 and 拢500,000 when , a venue in Billingshurst, West Sussex.
Part of an , which also included a specimen of the now-extinct passenger pigeon, was dug from a quarry in Wyoming.
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He prowled the planet in the late Jurassic Period 155 to 145 million years ago, feasting on plant-eating dinosaurs and probably other predators. As an adult, he would have grown up to 8 metres long, not as large as his most famous relative, Tyrannosaurus rex, who arrived on the scene 80 million years later, but was one of the largest predatory dinosaurs of the time.
鈥淭丑别 Allosaurus, together with T. rex, has become the quintessentially large, carnivorous dinosaur in western popular culture,鈥� says Rupert van der Werff, director of the Summers Place Auctions. 鈥淕iven the size of this Allosaurus, it also adds the cute factor and it may not just attract interest from museums, but could also be the wow factor in a luxurious living room.鈥�
In the end the bids did not meet the reserve price, but a spokesperson for Summers Place said that a private sale may be arranged to allow unsuccessful bidders to put in new offers.
Image credit: Christopher Pledger/eyevine
