Heather Yakin: Mongolian dino fossils spark auction scandal
Federal prosecutors are trying to repatriate a stolen dinosaur skeleton to Mongolia.
On Monday, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara filed a civil complaint seeking the forfeiture of a hot Tarbosaurus bataar, a Late Cretaceous Period carnivore closely related to Tyrannosaurus rex.
"When the skeleton was allegedly looted, a piece of the country's natural history was stolen with it, and we look forward to returning it to its rightful place," Bharara declared. His office has some experience in returning pilfered art and antiquities to their rightful countries.
Tarbosaurus bataar lived 70 million years ago. Much as T. rex fossils have only been found in North America, and primarily at Hell Creek in Montana, T. bataar has been found only in the Nemegt Basin and nearby areas of southern Mongolia.
The fossil skeleton in question is 24 feet long and 8 feet tall; the head is about 80 percent complete, the body 75 percent complete. It's an impressive fossil. Perhaps that's why someone smuggled the thing from the Gobi Desert and brought it to the U.S. via the U.K. in March 2010.
Mongolia has long outlawed private ownership or export of dinosaur fossils and archaeological relics. Those items belong in museums under Mongolian law.
The T. bataar was listed for auction by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions and sold on May 20 for $1.05 million despite a temporary restraining order issued a day earlier by a Texas judge. The New York Observer reported that a lawyer who represents the Mongolian government tried to halt the auction, announcing from the floor that he had a judge on the line, but he was hustled aside, and the bidding proceeded. The sale was made contingent on any court proceedings.
The auction house claims the T. bataar's papers were in order, and they believe their seller got the specimens legitimately. But according to Bharara, the customs documents are rife with signs that the fossil is contraband.
Bharara said the papers listed the T. bataar's country of origin as Great Britain. The fossil was valued on the customs forms at $15,000 rather than the $950,000 to $1.5 million listed in the auction catalog. The documents described the bones, misleadingly, as "two large rough fossil reptile heads, six boxes of broken fossil bones, three rough fossil reptiles, one fossil lizard, three rough fossil reptiles and one fossil reptile skull."
The scandal has attracted a great deal of attention in some circles, and sparked an indignant editorial in the UB Post, a weekly English-language newspaper in Mongolia, that calls the theft and sale of the purloined Tarbosaur an example of corruption that threatens modern Mongolia.
With the weight of federal prosecutors behind them, several paleontologists — from the United States, Canada and Mongolia — examined the T. bataar on June 5. The fossil is the real deal, they declared, and clearly comes from the Gobi region.
This auction saga's got it all: science, smuggling, international intrigue — and Preet Bharara, dinosaur hunter.
hyakin@th-record.com
On Monday, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara filed a civil complaint seeking the forfeiture of a hot Tarbosaurus bataar, a Late Cretaceous Period carnivore closely related to Tyrannosaurus rex.
"When the skeleton was allegedly looted, a piece of the country's natural history was stolen with it, and we look forward to returning it to its rightful place," Bharara declared. His office has some experience in returning pilfered art and antiquities to their rightful countries.
Tarbosaurus bataar lived 70 million years ago. Much as T. rex fossils have only been found in North America, and primarily at Hell Creek in Montana, T. bataar has been found only in the Nemegt Basin and nearby areas of southern Mongolia.
The fossil skeleton in question is 24 feet long and 8 feet tall; the head is about 80 percent complete, the body 75 percent complete. It's an impressive fossil. Perhaps that's why someone smuggled the thing from the Gobi Desert and brought it to the U.S. via the U.K. in March 2010.
Mongolia has long outlawed private ownership or export of dinosaur fossils and archaeological relics. Those items belong in museums under Mongolian law.
The T. bataar was listed for auction by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions and sold on May 20 for $1.05 million despite a temporary restraining order issued a day earlier by a Texas judge. The New York Observer reported that a lawyer who represents the Mongolian government tried to halt the auction, announcing from the floor that he had a judge on the line, but he was hustled aside, and the bidding proceeded. The sale was made contingent on any court proceedings.
The auction house claims the T. bataar's papers were in order, and they believe their seller got the specimens legitimately. But according to Bharara, the customs documents are rife with signs that the fossil is contraband.
Bharara said the papers listed the T. bataar's country of origin as Great Britain. The fossil was valued on the customs forms at $15,000 rather than the $950,000 to $1.5 million listed in the auction catalog. The documents described the bones, misleadingly, as "two large rough fossil reptile heads, six boxes of broken fossil bones, three rough fossil reptiles, one fossil lizard, three rough fossil reptiles and one fossil reptile skull."
The scandal has attracted a great deal of attention in some circles, and sparked an indignant editorial in the UB Post, a weekly English-language newspaper in Mongolia, that calls the theft and sale of the purloined Tarbosaur an example of corruption that threatens modern Mongolia.
With the weight of federal prosecutors behind them, several paleontologists — from the United States, Canada and Mongolia — examined the T. bataar on June 5. The fossil is the real deal, they declared, and clearly comes from the Gobi region.
This auction saga's got it all: science, smuggling, international intrigue — and Preet Bharara, dinosaur hunter.
hyakin@th-record.com
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