500 photos of the Beatles have been found in the archives of a Scottish university, where they have been languishing for over 30 years:

Five hundred photographs of the Beatles, many of them unpublished, have been found in the archives of a Scottish university, where they have been gathering dust for more than 30 years.

The photos, discovered in Dundee University's archives, show the British pop group on the brink of international stardom in the early 1960s, the Times newspaper reported Monday.

The pictures are part of an archive of 130,000 negatives taken by Hungarian-born photo-journalist Michael Peto and given to the university after his death in 1970, the newspaper said.

Many show band members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr relaxing between takes while shooting their second feature film "Help."

The university was aware of "one or two" pictures of the band among the negatives, but only discovered the extent of the collection during a project to digitize its archives.

"He was a people's photographer and his photographs reflect the backstage nature of his work and are quite unique in this respect," said Pat Whatley, the head of the university's archives who discovered the collection.

Peto is best known for his photographs of ballet stars Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn, and of actors Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.