On May 20, 2012, Heritage Auctions in New York City offered a nearly complete fossil of Tarbosaurus bataar, a dinosaur that lived in central Asia during the Cretaceous period, around the same time as its more famous near-twin, Tyrannosaurus rex.
For paleontologists, this would have been a priceless specimen; for Coleman Burke, the Manhattan-based real-estate developer who made the winning bid, it was worth just over $1.05 million.
Burke, an avid fossil collector, wanted to install his massive new prize, carburetor-sized vertebrae and all, in the Terminal Warehouse building on 12th Avenue, the former home of the notorious Tunnel nightclub.
Instead, as Paige Williams recounts in her new book, “The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth’s Ultimate Trophy” (Hachette Books), the T. bataar skeleton became the center of a federal court case with global repercussions.
Heritage got the Tarbosaurus from Eric Prokopi, who had been collecting fossils in his Florida hometown since he was a little boy. When he started college, he volunteered at a natural-history museum.
But after scientists there took credit for some discoveries he had made, then told him to stay away from the digging sites, he decided his future in paleontology would be strictly cash-based.
As Prokopi’s business grew, he started to specialize in flipping other people’s dinosaur bones — buying them practically out of the ground, then cleaning and refurbishing them to sell to eager collectors at a significant markup. But, apart from the occasional splurge, Prokopi and his wife put most of the profits into renovating the properties they owned around Gainesville. And there was a substantial risk — the bones were not always legally sourced.
In a nation such as Mongolia, for example, fossils were considered a valuable scientific resource. Some institutions, such as Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History, have permission to take fossils out of the country for research purposes, but selling them to foreigners was strictly illegal and Americans weren’t supposed to be dealing in them. There were ways around that, though.
Eric ProkopiEric Prokopi
Prokopi found a fossil dealer in Japan who had a source inside Mongolia. If customs officials asked where he got his bones, he could just say they had come from Japan. Another easy trick was to identify the shipment as “fossil reptiles” instead of, say, T. bataar, which with few exceptions had ever been found only in the Mongolian desert. Finally, when the fossils went up for sale, a vague description like “Central Asia” was often enough to keep the transaction legitimate.
Prokopi’s first T. bataar skull was put up for auction in 2007, sparking a bidding war between Nicolas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio that brought the final price up to $276,000. (Cage got that skull, but DiCaprio quickly ordered another one from Prokopi.) Soon after that, though, Prokopi had a falling-out with his Japanese connection and decided to go straight to the source, a Mongolian tour director named Tuvshinjargal Maam, or Tuvshin for short.
Prokopi flew to Mongolia to meet Tuvshin twice, but the real business was mostly conducted by e-mail. Tuvshin would send pictures of what he had, Prokopi would pick out what he wanted, and the fossils were sent to a partner in England. In 2010, Prokopi received a shipment of T. bataar bones and made plans for the fossil’s restoration.
When he was finished, the bones he’d smuggled out of Mongolia accounted for only about one-third of the skeleton he put up for sale through Heritage. He filled out the rest with a combination of other Tarbosaurus bones from his inventory and sculpted casts.
Still, selling what was basically an entire Tarbosaurus skeleton was big news. Once Bolortsetseg Minjin, a Mongolian paleontologist living on Long Island, heard about the impending auction, she realized the T. bataar must have been smuggled out of her native country and was determined Mongolia should get the bones back. Minjin e-mailed Oyungerel Tsedevdamba, an author and activist, and asked for her help getting the government involved. Tsedevdamba landed a meeting with Mongolia’s president, Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj.
Elbegdorj’s first term in office was marred by several scandals, from rising inflation and reports of government corruption to widespread criticism of human-rights violations. He didn’t see what he stood to gain by starting a fight over a bunch of dinosaur bones. Tsedevdamba explained their scientific value, then argued that the fossil could become a symbol of national pride. If Mongolia didn’t get the T. bataar back, Elbegdorj would still be recognized for making an effort; if they did, he’d become a hero.
Convinced, Elbegdorj called an American friend, a Houston lawyer named Robert Painter. Painter dashed to Dallas to get a judge to sign an order blocking the auction, then jumped on a plane to New York City to confront Heritage directly.
Bolortsetseg Minjin (left to right), Dr. Philip J. Currie, and Robert PainterAP
As the auction neared, Heritage checked with Prokopi about what he wanted to do. He’d already sunk a lot of time and money into restoring the fossil, and he thought he might be able to beat the legal pressure, but then he decided it wasn’t worth the risk. Just hours after he called off the sale, though, he changed his mind and told Heritage to go ahead.
Painter was in the room when the Heritage auctioneer opened bidding on the T. bataar. Calling the judge on his cellphone and waving the restraining order in his hand, he tried to make his way to the podium to stop the proceedings, only to be confronted by security guards.
Once the auction had gone through, Painter prepared to return home and deliver the news to Elbegdorj when he got a phone call from Sharon Cohen Levin, an assistant US attorney in Manhattan, offering her assistance.
Levin ran the office’s asset-forfeiture division, and after Painter had Elbegdorj make a formal request on behalf of the Mongolian government, she filed a civil action requesting the federal government be allowed to seize the T. bataar as smuggled goods. Homeland Security agents went to the warehouse in Queens, where the disassembled skeleton had been kept in storage since the auction and took the crates away. (In the midst of all this, as one might expect, Coleman Burke withdrew his bid.)
A few months later, Prokopi was arrested on smuggling charges. As he was taken from his home in handcuffs, and Homeland Security agents began cataloging all the fossils they found, a delivery truck arrived with a heavy shipment.
The agents got a new warrant to open the box and found an assortment of bones from an Oviraptor, another Cretaceous dinosaur that could have come only from Mongolia. Facing overwhelming evidence, Prokopi would eventually plead guilty and be sentenced to six months in federal prison.
He surrendered not just the T. bataar he’d tried to sell through Heritage and the Oviraptor that had arrived the day his house was raided, but several other specimens as well.
For her efforts in saving the fossil, Minjin was awarded a medal by the Mongolian government. She continues to play an active role in calling attention to Mongolia’s paleontological heritage.
As for the T. bataar, it was sent home, where Tsedevdamba, who became the minister of culture, sports and tourism, welcomed it as the centerpiece of the newly launched Central Museum of Mongolian Dinosaurs.
