Nicolas Cage returns stolen dinosaur skull

However in July 2014, Cage was informed by US authorities that the skull might have been stolen.

When investigators determined the skull had been taken illegally from Mongolia, he agreed to give it back.

It’s a happy ending for everyone, except maybe Nicolas Cage‘s street cred as a wily high-class thief.

“Each of these fossils represents a culturally and scientifically important artifact looted from its rightful owner”, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.

Neither Cage nor the gallery have been accused of any wrongdoing or charged with any offences. While initial reports did not specify who exactly was in possession of the 67 million-year-old skull, it has since been revealed that actor Nicolas Cage purchased the fossil for $276,000 at a Beverly Hills auction house.

This Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton went on display in Mongolia in 2013 after being returned by USA authorities.

The Department of Homeland Security told Cage previous year that it might have been stolen, publicist Alex Schack said.

Bharara described Prokopi as a “one-man black market in prehistoric fossils”.

It was unclear whether the Cage skull was connected to Prokopi, who pleaded guilty in December 2012 to smuggling a almost complete Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton out of Mongolia’s Gobi desert and was later sentenced to three months in prison. For Cage, he might have lost an impressive conversation piece, but he might well be pleased that the news of his stolen skull has just added yet another layer of mystique to one of Hollywood’s strangest stars. The remains of the dinosaur have only been found in Mongolia, where it has been illegal to export remains since 1924.