Dinosaur Skeleton to Be Returned to Mongolians - NYTimes.com: "At a ceremony on Monday near the United Nations, Homeland Security officials are scheduled to turn over to Mongolian representatives the unusually complete skeleton of the giant raptor, 8 feet high and 24 feet long. It was seized last year from a confessed looter and commercial paleontologist, Eric Prokopi of Gainesville, Fla., who had smuggled in the bones and sold the reassembled creature at auction for just over $1 million. The sale was later canceled.
“In this business I hesitate to identify any particular return as the most unusual,” said John T. Morton, director of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who is to preside over the repatriation with United States Attorney Preet Bharara.
After all, Mr. Morton recalled in an interview, there have been saber-toothed tiger fossils and Hitler’s bookmark and Saddam Hussein’s AK-47. “But this is clearly one of the most exceptional, if not the most exceptional, we’ve ever returned.”"
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