Mongolian Economy and Finance

By Helen Wright Dulamsuren Ganbaatar tucks her red hair behind her ear and thinks before answering my question: should criminals who smuggle fossils and dinosaur bones out of Mongolia receive tougher punishments?

NEW YORK (AP) -- Federal prosecutors say a 65-million-year-old dinosaur skull was smuggled into the U.S. by a French company that tried pass the fossil off as a cheap replica.

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) – Federal prosecutors say a 65-million-year-old dinosaur skull was smuggled into the U.S. by a French company that tried to pass the fossil off as a cheap replica.

The Lenin Museum, once property of the Mongolian People’s Party (MPP), will soon be converted into the Central Museum of Dinosaurs.

US officials on Thursday turned over to the Mongolian government enough 80 million-year-old dinosaur skeletons to stock a museum, including two relics of a kind of dinosaur that a prosecutor said "memorably stampeded" in a Hollywood movie .

The fossils of 18 dinosaurs have been shipped back to Mongolia, US authorities have said.

The fossils of more than 18 dinosaurs were repatriated to Mongolia Thursday after a joint investigation by federal prosecutors and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unearthed an illegal bone collector’s cache.

The feds on Thursday agreed to ship the skeletal remains of 18 dinosaurs back to Mongolia after finding the smuggled fossils during a criminal investigation.

U.S. officials on Thursday turned over to the Mongolian government enough 80 million-year-old dinosaur skeletons to stock a museum, including two relics of a kind of dinosaur that a prosecutor said "memorably stampeded" in a Hollywood movie.

Archaeologists from the University of Wrocław will conduct excavations in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.

Last week, Ambassador of Mongolia to the United States B.Altangerel signed an agreement on the repatriation of Mongolia-originated items collected at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department (ICE).

A fossil of one of the most fearsome predators to have stalked the earth is being returned to Mongolia after it was located in Britain as part of an investigation into dinosaur smuggling, The Independent can reveal.

It takes some chutzpah to lie to the U.S. government and then claim that your misdeeds were a service to humanity.

The Gobi Desert of Central Asia is one of the earth's desolate places.

The skeleton was, according to the Heritage Auctions catalogue for its May 2012 auction of fossils, meteorites, crystals, and petrified wood, a “museum-quality specimen of one of the most emblematic dinosaurs ever to have stalked this earth.”

New York (AFP) - An American who illegally imported dinosaur skeletons from Mongolia -- one of them 70 million years old -- was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison, authorities said.

NEW YORK - A Virginia fossils dealer was sentenced Tuesday to three months in prison even after a prosecutor described his cooperation with law enforcement in heroic terms, saying he enabled more than 18 largely complete dinosaur fossils to be located, enough for Mongolia to open its first dinosaur museum.

NEW YORK – A federal judge in New York has sentenced a Florida fossils dealer to three months in prison for smuggling a 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus skeleton out of Mongolia.

A Florida fossil hunter who illegally dug up dinosaur skeletons from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia was sentenced on Tuesday to three months in prison on charges that he smuggled the bones into the United States, then used them to reassemble a Tyrannosaurus bataar, above, that he sold for $1 million through a New York auction house.

From looking at character references for Eric Prokopi, (40) a University of Florida (1996) graduate with a B.S. in Engineering, he was a dedicated scientist, friend, father and husband … in fact he still is but he is on his way to federal prison.