Nicolas Cage Forced to Return Stolen Tyrannosaurus Skull

Cage was first informed by authorities back in 2014 that his purchase might have been stolen goods.

Again, this is not a movie plot.

Lederman said that when Prokopi put the fossil up for auction, he believed it to have been legally imported.

The skull is similar to that of another Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton that went on display in the Mongolian capital back in 2013.

Cage, who won an Academy Award in 1996 for his leading role in “Leaving Las Vegas”, is an avid collector and was reportedly in competition with Leonardo Di Caprio for purchase of the fossil, according to U.S. media. But federal authorities contacted him previous year to say they suspected it was stolen.

He has been working with officials since learning it had been taken illegally. “Overall, this remarkable specimen is scientifically accurate and important”, it added, with the 32-inch (80-centimeter) skull 65 percent complete.

Neither Cage nor the I.M. Chait gallery were named in the trial, though Cage’s publicist confirmed it was the same skull.

Assistant U.S. Attorney, Martin Bell is the one who prosecuted Prokopi and is also the lead government lawyer in Nicolas Cage’s dinosaur skull case.

USA attorney Preet Bharara filed a civil forfeiture complaint last week in Manhattan.

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

At the time of sale, the skull was described as “an extremely rare tyrannosaurid” from the Late Cretaceous period (67 million years ago). In some kind of odd karmic twist, that comic had been stolen from his house in 2000 and recovered in April of 2011 when it was found in an abandoned storage locker.