The missing man aged 39 is believed to have fallen into the statue while trying to retrieve his dropped mobile phone. His body was discovered upside down inside the Stegosaurus’s leg when a father and son noticed a smell coming from the statue on Saturday.

The father spotted the corpse through a crack and called the police. Firefighters then cut open the dinosaur to release the body.

It has not been confirmed how the man became trapped in the statue which is outside the Cubic Building in the Santa Coloma de Gramenet suburb of Barcelona.

An autopsy will take place to try and determine what happened and how long he had been there.

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“It looks as though he was trying to retrieve a mobile phone, which he had dropped. It looks like he entered the statue head first and could not get out.

“We are still waiting for the autopsy results, so we do not know how long he was in there, but it seems he was there for a couple of days.”

The statue has now been removed from where it stood outside the Cubic Building. It was initially put there to advertise a cinema.