Allosaurus dinosaur skeleton fails to sell for £500,000

The skeleton of the 9ft-long (2.7m) juvenile Allosaurus was expected to fetch between £300,000 and £500,000

A near-complete skeleton of one of the largest predatory dinosaurs to walk the earth has failed to sell at auction.

The 9ft-long (2.7m) juvenile Allosaurus was the first such dinosaur skeleton to go under the hammer in the UK, according to auctioneers.

It was found by renowned German palaeontologist Raimund Albersdoerfer in 2009 at a quarry in Wyoming, USA.

The 150-155 million-year-old skeleton was expected to fetch between £300,000 and £500,000 at Summers Place Auctions.

A spokeswoman for the auction house in Billingshurst, West Sussex, said bidding stopped below the reserve price agreed with the seller.

But Summer Place Auctions would be open to "reasonable" offers, she added.

The creature lived during the late Jurassic period and walked on two legs like its more famous carnivorous relative from the late Cretaceous period, Tyrannosaurus Rex.

However, the T-Rex had very short forelimbs, while the Allosaurus had longer arms.

Fully grown, the Allosaurus could reach 12m (39ft) in length.

The skeleton retains an articulated skull with dagger-like teeth.

Errol Fuller, curator of the sale, said relatively complete dinosaurs were extremely rare and the remains of juveniles even more so.

The bones of the Allosaurus were scattered over a wide area and intermingled with the much larger remains of a Sauropod.

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Two years ago, the auction house sold the skeleton of a long-necked Diplodocus longus to the Natural History Museum of Denmark for £400,000.

It was also found in Wyoming, by the teenage sons of Mr Albersdoerfer.

Mr Fuller said the same auction house sold a mammoth last year, and also had links with Mr Albersdoerfer, who always brought his finds back to Germany.

He said there had been a "fair amount of interest in the skeleton from museums and private collectors around the world".