France returned an extremely rare 70-million-year-old Tarbosaurus bataar skeleton and 30 other paleontological finds to Mongolia on Monday. The fossils were looted from the Gobi Desert by a European trafficking network, smuggled via South Korea, and confiscated by French customs in 2015. At a ceremony in Paris, French Public Accounts Minister Amelie de Montchalin handed the items to Mongolia’s Culture Minister Undram Chinbat. The cache includes dinosaur eggs and the prized skeleton, worth over $800,000 at the time of seizure and now valued two to three times higher.
This restitution matters because it reflects a growing global trend of repatriating looted cultural and scientific treasures, paralleling similar efforts for art and artifacts. The dinosaur skeleton is a significant scientific specimen, and its return underscores Mongolia’s push to reclaim its natural heritage. The case also highlights the booming market for dinosaur fossils, with recent high-profile sales at Sotheby’s and Phillips, and adds to a history of repatriations, including a 2014 U.S. handover and actor Nicolas Cage’s return of a Tarbosaurus skull in 2015.