Actor Nicolas Cage has agreed to return a stolen dinosaur skull to the Mongolian government, Reuters reports.
You're probably imagining Cage in an Indiana Jones costume, pilfering ancient artifacts in Mongolia. But the truth is actually far more mundane: Cage bought the skull in 2007 from a Beverly Hills gallery, paying $276,000 for it and outbidding Leo DiCaprio in the process. (Poor guy just can't catch a break; Nic Cage has also managed to actually win an Oscar.)
However, according to Cage's publicist Alex Schack, in July of 2014 Cage was informed by the U.S. authorities that the skull might have been stolen. After this was proven as fact, Cage agreed to return it to the Mongolian government. The actor has not been accused of wrongdoing.
The skull Cage bought once belonged to a Tyrannosaurus bataar, a 33-39 feet long carnivore that lived in Asia some 70 million years ago.
The I.M. Chait gallery which sold Cage the skull is no stranger to selling previously stolen dinosaur parts. According to Reuters, the gallery once purchased and sold a smuggled dinosaur skeleton from paleontologist Eric Prokopi, known for dealing with shady prehistoric fossils. Prokopi pleaded guilty in Dec. 2012 for smuggling a near-complete Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton out of Mongolia.
It's unknown whether the skull Cage bought was related to Prokopi.