Rare Allosaurus dinosaur skeleton up for auction

A rare fossilized skeleton of an Allosaurus, ancestor of the T-Rex, will go under the hammer at the Drouot auction house in Paris on Tuesday.

"One immediately thinks of Jurassic Park," auctioneer Alexandre Giquello told The Associated Press.

He said he expects interest from small private museums, or even a wealthy private buyer keen to display the fossil in his home.

The remains of this 150 million-year-old dinosaur from the Upper Jurassic period were found in an American ranch of Wyoming in 2016.

It was pretty intact as more than 70 per cent of the skeleton presented for the auction is made of its real fossilized bones, skull, teeth and claws.

Iacopo Briano, palaeontologist and fossil sales expert, explained that the few missing parts were recreated by specialist mouldings based on the original skeleton.

This reconstructed Allosaurus is 10 metres-long and 3.5 metres-high, one of the largest one known to date.

The fossilized skeleton is estimated to fetch between 1 and 1.2 million Euros (1,180,575 US dollars to 416,690 US dollars).