Beijing: As many as 231 fossilised dinosaur eggs and a dinosaur skeleton have been seized from a house in China's southern Guangdong Province.
Police raided the house on July 29 and seized the eggs, which date back to the Cretaceous Period, state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday citing the government of Heyuan City.
The skeleton was later identified as belonging to a Psittacosaurus, a genus of extinct ceratopsian dinosaur.
Local residents plundered a construction site where a large number of dinosaur eggs were found in June, and again on July 28 when more eggs were found in the area, prompting police action the next day to retrieve the lost fossils.
Heyuan is known as the "hometown of the dinosaur" in China, with many fossilised eggs discovered over the decades.
The city's museum has set a Guinness record for having collected more than 10,000 dinosaur eggs.
Chinese laws place fossilised creatures under state ownership and ban any trade or possession of them except by specialised institutions and professionals.
