He’ll have a yabba-dabba-do time – behind bars.
A Florida fossils dealer was sentenced Tuesday to three months in jail for lying to the feds while smuggling a 70 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus skeleton out of Mongolia and into the United States.
Manhattan federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein handed Eric Prokopi, 39, the jail time followed by 15 months’ supervised release even after federal prosecutors praised Prokopi for helping them recover at least 17 other dinosaur fossils following his 2012 arrest — enough, they said, for Mongolia to someday open its first dinosaur museum.
Prokopi smuggled the Tyrannosaurus bones into the US by making false statements to officials, claiming they were reptile fossils from Great Britain. The bones were stolen between 2010 and 2012 from the Gobi Desert area of Mongolia.
Once assembled, the Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton sold at a Manhattan auction for $1.05 million before it was seized and returned to Mongolia.
Prokopi apologized to the court for his actions, saying it cost him his marriage, business, self-respect and left him bankrupt and “six figures” in the red.
He also said he hoped his actions haven’t put a black mark on the field of commercial paleontology, and made no bones about someday resuming his work — legally.
“I sincerely love fossils,” he said.