ICE Arrests Florida Man for Illegal Import of Tyrannosaurus Skeleton
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement arrested a Florida man in connection with a scheme to illegally import dinosaur fossils into the U.S., including a nearly complete Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton from Mongolia, and a Microraptor skeleton from China. The arrest follows an earlier civil suit seeking forfeiture of the Tyrannosaurus skeleton.
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Eric Prokopi of Gainesville, Fla., owns and runs a business called "Everything Earth" out of his home and is a self-described "commercial paleontologist," ICE said. He buys and sells whole and partial fossilized dinosaur skeletons. Between 2010 and 2012, Prokopi acquired dinosaur fossils from foreign countries and unlawfully transported them to the U.S., misrepresenting the contents of the shipments on customs forms.
Many of the fossils in Prokopi's possession were indigenous to Mongolia and could only be found in that country. Mongolian officials have uncovered a witness who accompanied Prokopi to an excavation site in 2009 and observed him physically taking bones out of the ground, ICE said. Since 1924, Mongolia has enacted laws declaring dinosaur fossils to be the property of the Mongolian government and criminalizing their export from the country.
One of the fossils Prokopi imported into the U.S. is the skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus bataar, a dinosaur that lived during the late Cretaceous period, about 70 million years ago. When importing this skeleton, Prokopi made misrepresentations about its identity, origin and value, ICE said. The Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton was sold at an auction in Manhattan for more than $1 million, pending the resolution of court proceedings that were instituted on behalf of the Mongolian government in an effort to reclaim the skeleton prior to the sale, but after the auction materials were published.
When he heard about the court proceedings, Prokopi responded by emailing an individual who works for Heritage Auctions -- the institution that put the skeleton up for sale -- saying, in part, "If (the Mongolian president) only wants to take the skeleton and try to put an end to the black market, he will have a fight and will only drive the black market deeper underground," ICE said.
Prokopi also illegally imported from Mongolia the skeleton of a Saurolophus angustirostris, another dinosaur from the late Cretaceous period that he ultimately sold to the I.M. Chait gallery in California, ICE said. In addition, Prokopi unlawfully sold the fossils of two other dinosaurs native to Mongolia, Gallimimus and Oviraptor mongoliensis, and imported the fossilized remains of a Microraptor, a small, flying dinosaur from China, ICE said.