Sharjah24 – AFP: "Big John", 66-million-years old and the largest triceratops skeleton ever unearthed at eight metres long, was sold at auction to a US collector on Thursday for a gargantuan 6.6 million euros.

The final price reached at the Drouot auction house in Paris -- 5.5 million euros before fees -- was well above the expected 1.2 to 1.5-million-euro sale price. 

Big John's skeleton is 60 percent complete and was unearthed in South Dakota in the United States in 2014 and put together by specialists in Italy. 

He will now return to the United States and the private collection of the unnamed buyer, whom the auction house said had fallen "in love" with Big John after coming to view him. 

The buyer beat 10 other bidders, with three in particular driving up the price in the final minutes.

"It's a remarkable price," said auctioneer Alexandre Giquello.

"I wasn't expecting this," added paleontologist Iacopo Briano who oversaw the sale. 

Big John lived during the Upper Cretaceous period, the final era of dinosaurs, and died in a floodplain, buried in mud that kept him well preserved.

A horn injury near his cranium suggests he got into at least one nasty fight. 

The sale was a European record, but still far off the $31.8 million paid last year for a 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in New York.

It was clear from the start that museums would be priced out of Wednesday's auction.

"We can't compete," said Francis Duranthon, director of the Toulouse Museum of Natural History, adding that the initial price estimate alone amounted to 20 to 25 years of his acquisitions budget

The auction house said there is a chance that the buyer may lend Big John to a museum or gallery to go on public display, but his intentions are not yet clear.