Advertisement

newsCrime

 70 million-year-old dinosaur skull gets caught in an international custody battle

A federal judge in Dallas recently sided with a North Texas doctor in a legal custody fight over a Mongolian dinosaur fossil, but government lawyers are still fighting to forfeit it.

Dr. James Godwin's victory against the government in the case of a stolen Mongolian dinosaur skull was short lived.

A federal judge in Dallas recently threw out the government's forfeiture lawsuit involving the fossil. To Godwin, a Wichita Falls anesthesiologist and fossil enthusiast, it seemed he might get to keep his prized Tyrannosaurus bataar skull, valued at about $225,000.

U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor said in his March 16 ruling that dinosaur fossils are not considered wild animals and therefore do not fall under the Lacey Act, which prohibits the trade of protected wildlife. The government had cited that law as the authority for its forfeiture action.

Advertisement

But O'Connor gave government lawyers time to refile their lawsuit, and they did just that, citing a different federal statute — the National Stolen Property Act. The feds maintain that the 70 million-year-old skull that belonged to a relative of Tyrannosaurus rex was among a horde of dinosaur fossils stolen from Mongolia years ago.

Crime in The News

Read the crime and public safety news your neighbors are talking about.

Or with:

The government says a U.S. fossil dealer traveled to Mongolia to obtain multiple fossils from a supplier and then shipped them to China to avoid a U.S. Customs inspection. From there, the fossils were shipped to the United Kingdom and then into the U.S., the forfeiture lawsuit says.

Dr. James W. Godwin
Dr. James W. Godwin(N/A / United Regional Health Care)

The international custody battle could provide a rare look into dinosaur fossil smuggling networks. International law and U.S. laws on stolen cultural property make it difficult for people to hold onto art, antiquities and artifacts that authorities allege were stolen from other countries.

Derek Fincham, a South Texas College of Law professor specializing in cultural heritage law, said the internet has made it harder for people to claim they didn't know about an artifact's history. And it doesn't matter what an owner knew or didn't know, he added. That's because the central question is, "Can the prosecutor establish this thing was involved in a crime?" he said.

Advertisement

"The feds don't lose very often. And they have all the advantages," Fincham said.

Fincham said the stolen property act was used to recover Nazi-looted art as well as antiquities stolen from the Middle East, Turkey and Greece and "has a richer body of precedent that a prosecutor can draw on."

However, Godwin's attorney, Michael Villa Jr., said he and his client will fight on. So far, he appears to be the only person putting up a fight over a Mongolian dinosaur fossil.

Advertisement

"We will move forward," Villa said. "We want our day in court."

Villa filed a response to the forfeiture suit on April 6, claiming the five-year statute of limitations to bring such an action has expired. His filing also says the government didn't follow court rules in amending its forfeiture lawsuit.

Federal agents seized the bataar skull from Godwin's home in July 2013. It's currently being stored at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Mont.

When agents with Homeland Security Investigations questioned Godwin about the skull in 2013, he told them he didn't know it was illegal to possess such items until he heard about a 2012 case involving a fossil smuggler, court records say.

"Godwin also claimed that if it was illegal to possess or sell Mongolian fossils, there was never any enforcement of those prohibitions," Assistant U.S. Attorney Dimitri N. Rocha said in the amended forfeiture lawsuit.

Innocent owner?

Multiple Tyrannosaurus bataar skulls were dug out of the Gobi desert and illegally smuggled out of Mongolia, federal officials say.

From there, they wound up in the hands of U.S. private collectors who dished out six figures for the fossils, including a Hollywood actor, a New York developer and the North Texas anesthesiologist.

Advertisement

Since federal authorities began a crackdown in 2012 on the little-known black market in dinosaur bones, more than 18 specimens have been returned to Mongolia. Two men were convicted in federal court of smuggling fossils into the U.S.

Actor Nicolas Cage was among buyers who agreed to part with their bataar skulls.

Godwin did not.

Advertisement
Tyrannosaurus bataar
Tyrannosaurus bataar (Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer)

Villa previously told The Dallas Morning News that his client bought the skull legally in the U.S. from a business partner and is an "innocent purchaser" under the law.

His bataar skull was unearthed from the Nemegt Basin in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia between 2000 and 2011, the lawsuit says.

The Gobi Desert is fertile ground for dinosaur fossils such as the Tyrannosaurus bataar, an Asian relative of Tyrannosaurus rex that roamed the Earth during the Cretaceous period.

Advertisement

Bataar fossils were first found in that part of Mongolia during a 1946 expedition, according to the forfeiture lawsuit, filed in Wichita Falls. The fossils aren't known to be found elsewhere in the world, experts say.

In Mongolia, which is nestled between China and Russia, antiques and relics such as dinosaur fossils are the property of the government even if they're excavated from private land, the forfeiture lawsuit says.

Villa said the forfeiture action means that someone can buy an antiquity from a U.S. store and years later be told to relinquish it because of a foreign law.

Advertisement

Scientific value

Villa has said U.S. government officials have not proved that the seized bataar skull actually originated in Mongolia. And he said there is case law favorable to his client that involved other antiquities imported into the U.S.

But Robert Painter, a Houston lawyer who represents Mongolia, previously told The News that U.S. authorities have plenty of evidence from two criminal prosecutions and multiple federal forfeiture judgments involving similar fossils. Federal judges in those cases, he said, were "satisfied that the government met the burden of proof."

Painter said he was surprised Godwin was contesting the forfeiture lawsuit and expected it would be "perhaps a vertical uphill battle." Buyers of foreign artifacts should know whether it's legal to own such objects, he said.

Advertisement

Godwin bought the fossil from Rick Rolater, who owned two By Nature Gallery stores — one in Wyoming and one in Colorado, court records show. Rolater, 72, was at the time the largest U.S. seller of "high-end Mongolian and Chinese fossils," prosecutors said.

In this photo released by Project Exploration, Chinese dinosaur hunter Zhao Xijin (left) and...
In this photo released by Project Exploration, Chinese dinosaur hunter Zhao Xijin (left) and University of Chicago professor Paul Sereno compare fossil bones at the site of a buried dinosaur herd in the Gobi Desert of Inner Mongolia, China, in May 2001.(Mike Hettwer)

A tipster called federal agents in 2012 to report seeing a bataar skull for sale in his Wyoming store for $320,000.

Rolater tried to hide his dinosaur fossil from agents, who eventually seized it. He then told agents that months earlier he had sold one of his bataar skulls to Godwin, who owned about a third of the By Nature stores, court records say.

Advertisement

Rolater was charged in Wyoming federal court with conspiracy to smuggle fossils into the U.S. and took a plea deal for probation.

"Emails sent by Rolater as early as 2010 suggest that he was aware that it was illegal to export dinosaur fossils from Mongolia and that Mongolia has heritage laws applicable to fossils," Rocha, the government lawyer, said in the March 30 amended complaint.

Rick Rolater
Rick Rolater(Jordan Curet / AP)

The stolen property act is one of the key federal laws that address antiquities trafficking, New York lawyer Stephen Juris wrote in an article last year.

Juris, an expert in that area, said in the article that the art and antiquities trade is the world's third largest black market, behind only drugs and arms, with an annual estimated value of up to $8 billion.

Advertisement

Villa said there's no indication that the government is seeking criminal charges against Godwin.

Fincham, the law professor, said fossil smuggling may seem at first like a victimless crime. The harm, however, is in the fact that scientists are unable to study the items and give them historical context due to the handiwork of "unskilled looters," he said.

Simmering tensions have long existed between fossil dealers and paleontologists, who argue that fossils sold to private collectors without corresponding data lose their scientific value.

But amateur excavators and those who profit from the fossil market say the treasures would remain hidden in the earth without their work.

Advertisement