STOLEN "NEST OF DINOSAURS" RETURNS TO MONGOLIA

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ More than 18 dinosaur skeletons illegally taken from Mongolia were formally returned to their homeland last week, the U.S. authorities announced. According to news published at discovery channel website, the fossilized bones were handed over to Mongolian officials in a repatriation ceremony held July 10 in New York. "Today, we return a veritable nest of dinosaurs," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement after the ceremony. "Although it cannot be shown as the direct cause, global warming like we are experiencing now has taken place during past mass extinctions. "This is a historic event for the U.S. Attorney's Office, in addition to being a prehistoric event, and we are proud to participate in the return of these dinosaur skeletons to their rightful home," Bharara said. The road to repatriation began two years ago, in 2012, when an auction house in New York was offering a skeleton of a Tarbosaurus bataar— an Asian cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex. The Mongolian authorities voiced concern that the specimen had likely been smuggled into the United States. The 70-million-year-old dinosaur species was native to the Mongolian Gobi desert, and to date has only been found in modern-day Mongolia. The Tarbosaurus sale attracted a bid of more than $1 million, but the suspicions of the Mongolian authorities sparked a long legal battle and federal investigation. The U.S. authorities froze the sale, and after a lengthy custody battle, the specimen was returned to Mongolia in May 2013.