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The near-complete skeleton of a male adult mammoth was sold at auction on Saturday 16 December to Strasbourg businessman Pierre-Etienne Bindschedler, whose company has a mammoth as its logo, explains .

Measuring over three metres high and five metres long, the Paleolithic-era skeleton is estimated to be between 12,000 to 15,000 years old.

It had been valued at a minimum of €450,000.

It was eventually sold for €548,250, having been brought to auction by an unnamed English lord, and will now sit in the foyer of Bindschedler’s business headquarters.

The skeleton is extremely well-preserved - with even the gigantic, curved, three-metre-long tusks intact - due to having spent 12,000 years in Siberian permafrost before being found.

“It is an exceptional specimen,” said Eric Mickeler, international natural history expert, quoted in . “The collector has taken great care [with it] and it shows excellent levels of fossilisation at the site at which the mammoth fell when it died.”