Misty the diplodocus: Dinosaur skeleton sells at auction for £500,000 The magnificent creature would have been alive in the Jurassic period She was found by a paleontologist's son in Ten Sleep quarry, Wyoming Only six full diplodocus skeletons have been found so far She was bought anonymously for £488,000 - and the new owners have promised that she will go on public display When you reach the ripe old age of 160million, life can surely hold few surprises. But even Misty the diplodocus might have raised an eyebrow yesterday when someone paid nearly half a million pounds to give her a new home. Her skeleton, which measures 55ft long and is taller than a double-decker bus, was sold at auction for £488,000. Ready for her close-up: Misty is dusted off for auction at Summer Place Auctions in West Sussex Relic: The ancient skeleton was found in the US state of Wyoming in 2009 The sale was a new chapter in the life (and death) of Misty, a magnificent diplodocus longus who roamed the earth in the late Jurassic period. Full diplodocus skeletons are extremely rare. Even Dippy, the celebrated centrepiece of the Natural History Museum in London, is a plaster-cast replica drawn from two sets of remains, and it was 1877 before any fossilised remains of a diplodocus were discovered. What no one knew then was that Misty was waiting to be unearthed in Ten Sleep, a fossil-rich quarry in Wyoming owned by renowned paleontologist Raimund Albersdoerfer. One day in 2009 he sent his two young sons out "to get them off my back" and to see what they could dig up. To his astonishment, they returned saying they had discovered an enormous bone beneath the silt. Albersdoerfer's professional team spent the next nine weeks digging out the dinosaur, which they nicknamed Misty, short for Mysterious. Scrubbed up: Misty was bought anonymously by a private institution - but they promised to keep her on display Lengthy: Misty is 55ft long, thanks to her huge neck and tail She was found at the edge of a dried-up watering hole and is believed to have come to grief after her enormous weight - probably 15 tons - caused her to get stuck in the mud. Predatory dinosaurs probably did the rest. Her remains were collected and shipped off to be painstakingly prepared at a leading fossil laboratory in the Netherlands. She was sent to England for reassembly and put up for sale at Summers Place auctions in West Sussex. The auction house, which more commonly sells garden sculpture and decorative fossils, staged an "Evolution Sale" that included a dodo pelvis, an Ichthyosaurus fossil and a stuffed horse. Dig: Misty was excavated by a team led by paleontologist Raimund Albersdoefer Getting stuck in: Mr Albersdoerfer revealed that Misty was found when he sent his son out digging one afternoon It was overseen by auction curator and natural history specialist Errol Fuller, who recently wrote a book with Sir David Attenborough and is an expert on extinct species. Mr Fuller is a friend of Mr Albersdoerfer and helped bring Misty to Britain when the paleontologist, who is German, said he wanted to auction her in Europe. "I'm sure the Americans are upset at losing it," Mr Fuller said. But they already have two or three of them in collections. It is understood interest was shown from the fast-developing natural history market in China, Asia and the Middle East. In the end she was bought anonymously for an unnamed private institution - with a pledge to put her on public display.