By John Amaruso
Like something out of a bad Nicholas Cage movie, a Florida man was arrested after allegedly smuggling dinosaur fossils through U.S. customs Wednesday. Among his rare fossils was an almost complete Tyrannosaurus Bataar skeleton.
The Tyrannosaurus Bataar skeleton was to be sold at an auction for $1.05 million dollars until it was revealed that the bones were in fact stolen from the Mongolian government.
Eric Prokopi, the man arrested for the crime, calls himself a "commercial Paleontologist" who buys and sells dinosaur fossils (I had no idea that job even existed). Nonetheless, Mr. Prokopi's theft of the ancient bones landed him various charges, including one count of conspiracy to smuggle illegal goods, another of possession of stolen property and making false statements to officers.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara was quoted as saying that they uncovered a "one-man black market in prehistoric fossils"
The fossil heist is the largest- and perhaps the only one of it's kind in history.
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