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 The office of Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan,
filed a civil forfeiture complaint last week to take possession
of the Tyrannosaurus bataar skull, which will be repatriated to
Mongolia.
The lawsuit did not specifically name Cage as the owner, but
Cage's publicist confirmed that the actor bought the skull in
March 2007 from a Beverly Hills gallery, I.M. Chait.
The "National Treasure" actor is not accused of wrongdoing, and
authorities said he voluntarily agreed to turn over the skull
after learning of the circumstances.
Alex Schack, a publicist for Cage, said in an email that the
actor received a certificate of authenticity from the gallery
and was first contacted by U.S. authorities in July 2014, when
the Department of Homeland Security informed him that the skull
might have been stolen.
Following a determination by investigators that the skull in
fact had been taken illegally from Mongolia, Cage agreed to hand
it over, Schack said.
Cage outbid fellow movie star Leonardo DiCaprio for the skull,
according to prior news reports.
The I.M. Chait gallery had previously purchased and sold an
illegally smuggled dinosaur skeleton from convicted
paleontologist Eric Prokopi, whom Bharara called a "one-man
black market in prehistoric fossils."
The Chait gallery has not been accused of wrongdoing. A
representative did not return a request for comment on Monday.
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It was unclear whether the Nicolas Cage skull was specifically
connected to Prokopi, who pleaded guilty in December 2012 to
smuggling a Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton out of Mongolia's Gobi
desert and was later sentenced to three months in prison.
As part of his guilty plea, Prokopi helped prosecutors recover at
least 17 other fossils.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Martin Bell, who prosecuted Prokopi, was
also the lead government lawyer in the Cage case, according to court
records.
The Tyrannosaurus bataar, like its more famous relative
Tyrannosaurus rex, was a carnivore that lived approximately 70
million years ago. Its remains have been discovered only in
Mongolia, which criminalized the export of dinosaur fossils in 1924.
Since 2012, Bharara's office has recovered more than a dozen
Mongolian fossils, including three full Tyrannosaurus bataar
skeletons.
"Each of these fossils represents a culturally and scientifically
important artifact looted from its rightful owner," Bharara said
last week.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Andrew Hay and Leslie Adler)
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