Step 1: Picture the external nose as a frame with two zones. The top portion is rigid bone and the bottom portion is springy cartilage. Crucially, bone forms only the upper one-third while cartilage forms the lower two-thirds.
Step 2: Test each choice. Saying the upper two-thirds is bony reverses the true proportion, so (a) fails. Saying only the lower one-third is cartilaginous also reverses it, so (b) fails.
Step 3: The cartilage skeleton is not a single plate. It contains paired upper lateral cartilages, paired lower lateral (alar) cartilages, paired lesser alar cartilages and a midline septal cartilage. A claim of one single lateral cartilage is therefore incorrect, eliminating (c).
Step 4: The bony vault is built from a pair of nasal bones, so the statement about two nasal bones holds true.
\[\boxed{\text{Two nasal bones}}\]