Stolen T-Rex Fossils Turned Over To Fbi

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has recovered some fossilized remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex that were removed from U.S. government land near Glasgow, bureau officials announced Saturday.

Thomas T. Kubic, Special Agent in Charge of the bureau’s Salt Lake City Division, said the FBI and the federal Farm Service Agency determined Tuesday that both lower jaws of a T-rex skull had been removed from the government-owned site in eastern Montana during the previous weekend.

The fossils will be inspected by paleontologists within the next few days to determine if they were damaged during the removal.

University of Notre Dame paleontologist Keith Rigby, who is digging at the site, said the T-rex may be the largest ever found.

Kubic said two people agreed during the week to turn over the fossils to two third-party intermediaries on the condition that the intermediaries give them to Gov. Marc Racicot.

Racicot asked that the fossils instead be delivered to the FBI, which took possession of them Friday evening in Great Falls.

No arrests have been made and the FBI did not identify the people who returned the fossils. The federal Antiquity Act protects fossils on federal land.

James Rector, a Glasgow lawyer who has been helping Rigby dig on the site, said he saw two sons of the former landowner and other relatives using a tractor to dig at the site on Sept. 14.

Rector said he alerted the FBI and Farm Service Agency, which owns the land.

Two men who identified themselves to The Associated Press in separate calls as Steve Walton and his cousin, Fred Walton, said Tuesday the group did not take anything from the site and were there merely out of curiosity. Both said ownership of the land is still in dispute and they might be entitled to some money from the dinosaur find.

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