Another data-point in the growing importance of wealthy amateurs (or just wealthy people) in science. According to the Independent, prize dinosaur fossils

are proving a hit with the rich and famous, always searching for something new to jazz up the country pile or Beverly Hills mansion.

Moneyed collectors are flocking to fossil auctions like never before. Just look at the catalogues of major auction houses over the past six months. In April, a 65-million-year-old Triceratops skeleton went under the hammer in Paris, and sold for a cool �400,000. In March, a prehistoric Siberian mammoth fetched an equally jaw-dropping �200,000 in New York.

With Christie's holding regular dinosaur auctions in the French capital, and similar events being held at Bonhams and fellow auctioneer Chait in Manhattan, there are more opportunities then ever to pick up a bony memento.

Some of these collectors are just interested in the novelty and decorative value of fossils:

"We are increasingly seeing clients coming to our contemporary art or furniture auctions and discovering natural history," says Fleur de Nicolay, fossil auction specialist at the Paris office of Christie's. "Our furniture collectors might be searching for a more decorative piece that would look good next to a master painting. That is why we mix our sales of fossils with our furniture sales. People realise that they are mostly decorative objects, especially ammonites or a fish fossil."

The problem here is that the market for dinosaur fossils is pretty small, and the growth of a high-end market is putting the squeeze on museums and scientists who don't have deep pockets.

[T]hose who can't afford to keep up with escalating prices are losing out. This includes Britain's museums, whose budgets are pitiful compared to your average Hollywood hotshot or shipping magnate in pursuit of his next palaeontology fix....

So how can museums compete? The Natural History Museum in London says its fixed annual budget for buying all its science specimens is £30,000. "Private collectors have always been a part of the landscape we work in; indeed the Museum's collection was founded from a private collection," says Angela Milner, the associate keeper of palaeontology at the museum. "But, as a publicly funded institution, we only have limited funds with which to buy specimens and in some cases we may well be priced out of the market."

Richard Edmonds, earth science manager at the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Centre in Dorset, agrees that there is a problem here. "I think it's worth drawing an analogy between funding of the arts and funding for science. If you compare the millions of pounds spent on acquiring the work of modern artists... well, in Dorset, that money would buy us all of the specimens ever found down here, as well as build us a museum in which to show them off."