Nicholas Cage turns over stolen dinosaur skull he bought

Once authorities decided the fossil “was indeed not legal smuggled in to the USA and rightfully belongs to the government of Mongolia”, Cage agreed to turn it over to Homeland Safety, Schack stated.

The civil complaint, which was announced last week, leaves the buyer unnamed.

At this point, I.M. Chait has not been accused of wrongdoing, and it is unclear whether this dinosaur skull was connected to Prokopi.

In 2014, the Department of Homeland Security told Cage they believed the skull had been smuggled from Mongolia via Japan. Can you imagine how much it would cost to ship a dinosaur skull all the way to Mongolia?

The dinosaur skull is 67-million-years-old and has been in possession of Nicolas Cage for nearly a full decade.

No charge has been filed against the actor or the Beverly Hills-based auction house, I.M. Chait.

The actor “fully cooperated with the investigation, including arranging an inspection of the fossil by agents”, Schack said.

At the time of the sale, Cage was not identified as the buyer but simply as a “private collector”, The New York Times said. What’s less clear is the position of the gallery that originally sold him the fossil.

Eight years ago, the skull of a Tyrannosaurus bataar was the star artifact in a natural history-themed luxury auction in Manhattan. After investigators looked into the relic, they learned that it was linked to formerly convicted paleontologist Eric Prokopi.

In December 2012 Prokopi pleaded guilty to smuggling nearly an entire Tyrannosaurus bataar out of Mongolia. According to federal prosecutors in NY, it had been removed illegally from Mongolia before Cage bought it.