Mammoth skeleton up for auction

PARIS -- Looking for that must-have ornament for a cavernous living room or backyard lawn? Perk up, Sotheby's is putting a complete mammoth skeleton up for sale in Paris.

The auction house plans the Oct. 2 sale as part of a collection of fossils, skeletons, meteors and minerals -- and even a dinosaur egg and woolly rhinoceros skeleton -- from the Kashiwagi museum in Japan.

Sotheby's said in a statement Thursday that the skeleton of Mammuthus primigenius, from Siberia, dates to the Middle Paleolithic period when Neanderthals roamed the earth. The house estimates it will go for more than $240,000.

The mammoth skeleton, which has been arranged in a bit of an upward-facing pose, measures 11 1/2 feet high -- just slightly taller than it is long.