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France has formally returned a 70-million-year-old Tarbosaurus bataar skeleton to Mongolia, nearly a decade after it was seized by French customs officials following its illegal removal from the Gobi Desert.
The handover ceremony took place on Monday in Paris, where Public Accounts Minister Amelie de Montchalin transferred the fossil and several additional artefacts, including dinosaur eggs, to Undram Chinbat, Mongolia’s Minister of Culture and Sports.
De Montchalin described the occasion as a milestone in the protection of global heritage.
“Today, a piece of the Gobi Desert is about to return to its homeland,” she said, noting that the restitution followed “a very long and meticulous investigation” carried out by French authorities.
The Tarbosaurus bataar skeleton, an “extremely rare” specimen considered the Asian cousin of the Tyrannosaurus rex, was smuggled out of Mongolia, passed through South Korea, and was eventually confiscated by French customs in 2015 in central France. At the time, it was valued at around €700,000 ($812,000) though experts say its market worth has since multiplied.
Chinbat welcomed the handover, stressing its significance for Mongolia.
“For me and for all the Mongolian people, it is very important to have our dinosaur fossils back,” she said.
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Mongolia plans to study, restore, and later exhibit the fossils in a museum currently under development. The country has long struggled with the illegal trade of fossils from the Gobi Desert, particularly from the Nemegt geological formation and considers all fossils found on its territory to be state property.
This repatriation follows several other high profile cases, including the 2015 return of a Tarbosaurus bataar skull previously purchased by U.S. actor Nicolas Cage.
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