Nanotyrannus skeleton goes to auction in New York with £4.5m price tag

The mounted skeleton of a newly-identified dinosaur once mistaken for a young Tyrannosaurus rex is up for auction - with a price-tag of at least $6m (£4.5m).Nicknamed "Jodi", the roughly 10-foot-tall (3m) skeleton will be auctioned by Sotheby's in New York. The sale comes a year after researchers confirmed that the skeleton belongs to a distinct genus.The Late Cretaceous carnivore is expected to fetch up to $9m when it goes under the hammer on Tuesday. The auction comes after Sotheby's sold a Tyrannosaurus rex, dubbed "Gus", for a record $50.1m (£37.4m) in July.The sales comes as some in the scientific community debate whether dinosaur remains should be sold privately.Sotheby's described "Jodi" as an "excellent exhibition-ready" skeleton with about 191 fossil-bone elements and a "beautifully preserved, virtually complete skull".The auction house added that the Nanotyrannus is "one of only three such skeletons known to science." The specimen is the first to come to market since the existence of the genus was confirmed by US researchers last October, Sotheby's said.Megan Jenkins, a palaeontologist at the University of Portsmouth, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Tuesday that Nan...