Hollywood actor Nicolas Cage has agreed to
turn over a rare stolen dinosaur skull he bought for $276,000 to U.S.
authorities so it can be returned to the Mongolian government.
The office of Preet Bharara, the U.S.
attorney in Manhattan, filed a civil forfeiture complaint last week to take
possession of the Tyrannosaurus bataar skull, which will be repatriated to
Mongolia.
The lawsuit did not specifically name Cage
as the owner, but Cage's publicist confirmed that the actor bought the skull in
March 2007 from a Beverly Hills gallery, I.M. Chait.
The "National Treasure" actor 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 U.S. 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 "one-man black market
in prehistoric fossils."
The Chait gallery has not been accused of
wrongdoing. A representative did not return a request for comment on Monday.
It was unclear whether the Nicolas Cage
skull was specifically connected to Prokopi, who pleaded guilty in December
2012 to smuggling a Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton out of Mongolia's Gobi desert
and was later sentenced to three months in prison.
As part of his guilty plea, Prokopi helped
prosecutors recover at least 17 other fossils.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Martin Bell, who
prosecuted Prokopi, was also the lead government lawyer in the Cage case,
according to court records.
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.
Since 2012, Bharara's office has recovered
more than a dozen Mongolian fossils, including three full Tyrannosaurus bataar
skeletons.
"Each of these fossils represents a
culturally and scientifically important artifact looted from its rightful
owner," Bharara said last week.
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