LONDON (AFP).- A rare full skeleton of a huge diplodocus dinosaur sold in Britain for £400,000 ($630,000, 470,000 euros) on Wednesday, an auction house said.

Nicknamed Misty, the 150-million-year-old fossil was bought to go on public display, said Summers Place Auctions in Billingshurst, southern England.

The female skeleton, found in the US state of Wyoming by the young sons of a famed dinosaur hunter, carried an estimate of £400,000 to £600,000.

Spokesman Rupert van der Werff said it was a "truly tremendous object".

"It has been an awful lot of work and a very exciting project, and to finally get to this final conclusion, we are delighted," he said.

"I can't tell you who bought it but it is going on public display."

The 17-metre-long (56 foot), six-metre-high dinosaur is one of very few full diplodocus skeletons found to date.

Misty was found in 2009 when US dinosaur hunter Raimund Albersdoerfer, who had been taking part in an excavation at a privately owned quarry in Wyoming, sent his sons Benjamin and Jacob to dig in an area nearby.

He was astonished when they returned at the end of the day to say they had found an enormous bone.

Nine weeks later Misty had been dug out. She has since been restored at a laboratory in the Netherlands.

Known by the Latin name Diplodocus Longus, the iconic plant-eating dinosaur was one of the largest animals to have ever walked the earth.

Full diplodocus skeletons are so rare that even the famous "Dippy" in London's Natural History Museum is actually a plastercast drawn from two different skeletons.



© 1994-2013 Agence France-Presse