$8,000.00 for a PENIS do I hear $9,000.00

A fossilized penis bone from an extinct walrus was sold for $8,000 at a Beverly Hills auction yesterday. The 4 1/2-foot-long bone was sold to the company that runs the Ripley's Believe It or Not museums. The price will top out at $9,600 when auction fees are included.

"Size matters, and the walrus has got every male beat," said Josh Chait, operations director for his family's auction house in Beverly Hills. "

It's a little sick, but where else are you going to get another one?

That's how collectors think."

The final price was well below the $12,000 to $16,000 the item had been expected to bring. The I.M. Chait Gallery says the Ripley's corporate office bought it with the intention of displaying it around the country. Discovered in Siberia, the fossilized penis bone is from a species of walrus that went extinct 12,000 years ago. The piece curves to a point and is covered with weathered skin and dry muscle tissue. The auction house said it was believed to be the largest known mammal penis fossil.