Lyon auction sells gigantic mammoth skeleton for 鈧�550k
A gigantic mammoth skeleton that is said to be well over 10,000 years old has been sold at auction in Lyon for almost 鈧�550,000.
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 鈧�450,000.
It was eventually sold for 鈧�548,250, having been brought to auction by an unnamed English lord, and will now sit in the foyer of Bindschedler鈥檚 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.
鈥淚t is an exceptional specimen,鈥� said Eric Mickeler, international natural history expert, quoted in . 鈥淭he 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.鈥�
