Two dinosaur skulls have fetched top prices at an auction in New York.
A giant 65-million-year-old Triceratops skull sold at Bonhams' Natural History auction for $242,000 (£148,000).
A skull from a cousin of the T. rex, the Alioramus remotus, went for $206,000 (£126,000). Both sold for almost double the original estimates.
The auction house would not reveal the buyers, but said the bones could end up as home ornaments.
'Like a sculpture'
The Triceratops skull, which was more than 80% intact, measured some 5.5ft (1.7m) long and had eye sockets the size of dinner plates.
Much smaller than a typical Triceratops head, it is thought to have belonged to a young dinosaur who died of an infection, the New York Times newspaper reported.
"It actually looks lovely... it looks like a sculpture," Bonhams' spokeswoman Staci Smith told AFP news agency.
She said private collectors often snap up "dinosauria" - the collective term for dinosaur eggs, teeth and bone fragments - to decorate their homes, but conceded: "You'd have to have an extremely large living room."
The skulls had been estimated to go for between $120,000 to $140,000 each.
A giant 65-million-year-old Triceratops skull sold at Bonhams' Natural History auction for $242,000 (£148,000).
A skull from a cousin of the T. rex, the Alioramus remotus, went for $206,000 (£126,000). Both sold for almost double the original estimates.
The auction house would not reveal the buyers, but said the bones could end up as home ornaments.
'Like a sculpture'
The Triceratops skull, which was more than 80% intact, measured some 5.5ft (1.7m) long and had eye sockets the size of dinner plates.
Much smaller than a typical Triceratops head, it is thought to have belonged to a young dinosaur who died of an infection, the New York Times newspaper reported."It actually looks lovely... it looks like a sculpture," Bonhams' spokeswoman Staci Smith told AFP news agency.
She said private collectors often snap up "dinosauria" - the collective term for dinosaur eggs, teeth and bone fragments - to decorate their homes, but conceded: "You'd have to have an extremely large living room."
The skulls had been estimated to go for between $120,000 to $140,000 each.
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