NEW YORK: A nearly complete 70-million-year-old tyrannosaurus’s skeleton will be returned to Mongolia following the prosecution of a Florida paleontologist by federal authorities in New York, US authorities said on Thursday. A New York federal judge ordered the skeleton and other fossils forfeited to the US government this week. Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman for Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said his office would return the 8-foot-tall (2.4 meter), 24-foot-long (7.3 meter), mostly reconstructed cousin of the Tyrannosaurus rex. Mongolian officials demanded the skeleton’s return after paleontologist Eric Prokopi sold it at a Manhattan auction last spring for $ 1.5 million.
Tyrannosaurus at center of custody case going home to Mongolia
