FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) – After a years-long ownership battle with the U.S. government, a Fort Worth judge allowed a Wichita Falls physician to keep his 70 million-year-old dinosaur skull fossil.
The Dallas Morning News reports a Dr. James Godwin, a palentology enthusiast, argued the government , which seized the Tyrannosaurus bataar skull in mid-2013, waited too long with its August 2017 claim.
The National Stolen Property Act allows five years from when an offense is discovered to seek forfeiture.
Godwin’s lawyer said U.S. agents in July 2012 learned of his connection to the fossil.
Authorities believe the fossil was unearthed from the Gobi Desert between 2000 and 2011, smuggled from Mongolia and illegally reached America. Godwin acquired it in Wyoming.
The skull is at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana.
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