A working group has been established to bring a nearly complete 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus Bataar, the centre of international debate, on May 18th by the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism and the General Police Department. The working group will leave for US on May 2nd to bring back the fossils and manage the return of Bataar home to Mongolia in one week. On May 18th, the day of Mongolian National Pride the rare finding will be publicly exhibited during an display on Sukhbaatar Square.

A self-described commercial paleontologist, American Eric Prokopi, sold the smuggled fossil at a Manhattan auction last spring for $1.05 million.  Eric Prokopi claimed the find was not from Mongolia, but the Mongolian Police provided evidence to prove Eric Prokopi guilty of smuggling the dinosaur fossil skeleton and helped to reveal a black market trade network.

The Vice Chairman of the paleontology museum where the Tyrannosaurus Bataar fossil will be stored is registering the US seized dinosaur fossils to catalogue the data. It is still unclear to the public the amount of the dinosaur’s skeleton that was found or indeed what size it is.

The State Investigation Department is conducting an investigation on three suspects involved in fossil smuggling across the Mongolian border involving a few Customs officers. Though the US seized dinosaur fossils are presented with Mongolian Customs documents the documents are cleared in the Mongolian Customs Archive. The Police are currently investigating this mystery.