US government seizes 'Ty' the dinosaur in NY
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. government seized a rare dinosaur skeleton Friday in what observers for the Mongolian government and a dinosaur expert called an important step toward returning the skeleton to its home in Mongolia.
Wooden crates holding pieces of the Tyrannosaurus bataar fossil were loaded onto a white truck at a Queens storage center shortly before it was driven away to a facility whose location was not disclosed.
"We are one step closer to bringing this rare Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton back home to the people of Mongolia," Mongolia President Elbegdorj Tsakhia said in a statement handed out by his Houston lawyer, Robert Painter, who took photographs of the seizure through a chain-link fence outside the Cadogan Tate Fine Art property where it had been stored.
"Today we send a message to looters all over the world: We will not turn a blind eye to the marketplace of looted fossils," he said.
Bolortsetseg Minjin, director of the Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs, took pictures of the exchange as well, saying: "It's a very exciting event. It's just unbelievable. I never expected it would be this fast."
The seizure was ordered by a federal judge in Manhattan earlier this week after the United States requested it in a lawsuit, saying the relics had been brought into the country with documents that disguised the potentially valuable dinosaur skeleton that originated in Mongolia as reptile bones from Great Britain.
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