Fossils dealer admits smuggling 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus into US

[link to www.dailymail.co.uk]

A Florida father-of-two has admitted smuggling stolen dinosaur bones into the US - including those of a Tyrannosaurus he sold for more than $1 million.

Eric Prokopi of Gainesville, 38, stole the skeletal remains of dinosaurs - including a nearly complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus bataar, a relative of the Tyrannosaurus rex - from Mongolia and China.

He came to the attention of federal officials earlier this year when he sold the Tyrannosaurus fossils to a Manhattan buyer for $1.1 million.

In a plea bargain, Prokopi gave up any claim to the skeleton as well as to others seized by authorities and admitted illegally importing a Chinese flying dinosaur, two oviraptors and a duckbilled creature known as a Saurolophus, the BBC reports.

Speaking in court in New York on Thursday, Assistant US Attorney Martin Bell revealed that a second, almost complete, Tyrannosaurus skeleton had also been found at Prokopi's home.

He faces up to 17 years imprisonment when he is sentenced in April.