Dubai Mall dinosaur to be auctioned off

Dubai: Emirates Auction are selling a 115-million-year-old dinosaur skeleton starting from Dh14.6 million, it was announced on Friday.

The 24.4-metre-long, 7-meter-high skeleton of a Diplodocus, which dates back to the Jurassic period, currently resides in Dubai Mall, but will go to a new home when its region-first sale wraps up on August 25. The long-necked herbivore was around 25-years of age when it died and would have weighed the same as five elephants.

Renowned for its long neck and tail that tapered to a whip-like end to defend itself against predators, its name literally means ‘double beam’ with ‘diploes’, meaning ‘double’, and ‘dokos’ meaning ‘beam’ in Greek. Nearly 90 per cent of the bones are original and all of them come from the same dinosaur, making it a unique find for palaeontologists who discovered it in a sleeping position at Dana Quarry in Wyoming, USA, in 2008.