DINO UN-CAGE’D
Nic agrees to give back stolen skull
Actor Nicolas Cage has agreed to turn over to Manhattan federal prosecutors a rare stolen dinosaur skull he bought for $276,000, so it can be returned to the Mongolian government.
US Attorney Preet Bharara filed a civil forfeiture complaint last week to take possession of the Tyrannosaurus bataar skull.
The lawsuit did not specifically name Cage as the owner, but the actor’s publicist confirmed that the “National Treasure” star bought the skull in March 2007 from Beverly Hills gallery I.M. Chait.
Cage is not accused of wrongdoing, and authorities said he voluntarily agreed to turn over the skull after learning of the circumstances.
Alex Schack, a publicist for Cage, said in an email that the actor received a certificate of authenticity from the gallery and was first contacted by US authorities in July 2014, when the Department of Homeland Security informed him that the skull might have been stolen.
Following a determination by investigators that the skull in fact had been taken illegally from Mongolia, Cage agreed to hand it over, Schack said.
Cage outbid fellow movie star Leonardo DiCaprio for the skull, according to prior news reports.
The I.M. Chait gallery had previously purchased and sold an illegally smuggled dinosaur skeleton from convicted paleontologist Eric Prokopi, whom Bharara called a “oneman black market in prehistoric fos sils.” The Chait gallery has not been accused of wrongdoing.
It was unclear whether the Nicolas Cage skull was connected to Prokopi, who pleaded guilty in December 2012 to smuggling a Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton out of Mongolia’s Gobi desert and was sentenced to three months in prison.
As part of his guilty plea, Prokopi helped prosecutors recover at least 17 other fossils.
The Tyrannosaurus bataar, like its more famous relative, Tyrannosaurus rex, was a carnivore that lived approximately 70 million years ago. Its remains have been discovered only in Mongolia, which criminalized the export of dinosaur fossils in 1924.