Atlasaurus dinosaur tail discovered in Mexico up for auction

Mexico City : A dinosaur tail discovered in Mexico will be up for auction on Tuesday night to raise funds for the reconstruction of thousands of schools damaged by two earthquakes that struck the Latin American nation in September.

The fossil tail of a dinosaur, with 4-meter length and 180 kg of weight, comes with a reserved price tag of 1.8 million Mexican pesos ($95,805), according to organizer Morton's Auction House. All the amount raised above the base price will be donated to the BBVA Bancomer Foundation to help finance the reconstruction of some 5,000 damaged schools.

The tail belongs to a 17-metre (56-foot), 22-tonne sauropod of the Atlasaurus imelakei species that roamed the Atlas Mountains of Morocco during the Middle Jurassic, some 165 million years ago.

Mexico was rattled with two major quakes in September, nearly 480 people were killed in the natural calamity.

"Education is an element of enormous importance for the country, an element of social mobility, that is why we support the reconstruction of schools," Adolfo Albo, from BBVA Bancomer Foundation, told Reuters.

The foundation hopes that the tail of the dinosaur will be sold for an amount much greater than the base price.

Moroccan paleontologists took 300 hours to clean the gigantic remains of the reptile, before scientists in Utah pieced them back together.