Rare dinosaur fossils of theropods, ornithischian return to Mongolia after 20 years

Mongolia is a country that takes keen interest in preserving diverse fossils of the world and that is why it is one of the most favoured targets of black market smuggles who steal and smuggle the fossils. But recent international recovery efforts, have helped Mongolia recover a rare dinosaur skeleton and a trove of fossils illegally exported nearly 20 years ago, authorities said.

The recovery includes a Tarbosaurus bataar skeleton that is estimated to be be over 50 per cent intact, along with 28 groups of fossilised dinosaur remains originally found in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, according to police. This also includes a half-complete, extremely rare relative of Tyrannosaurus rex.

According to D Munkhkhuyag, head of the police public relations department, smugglers “with the aim of making a profit”, had smuggled the bones out of the country in 2006.

France discovered first specimens

It was in 2013 that French customs officials discovered some of the first specimens. For more than two years France and Mongolia worked together under international illicit cultural heritage trafficking laws to repatriate the fossils.

In December 2025, France held a formal handover ceremony in Paris where representatives from both countries were present.

Museum paleontologists in Mongolia will clean the fossils before it is put on display for the public after its recovery.

Some of the recovered fossil fragments are that of theropods, ornithomimosaurs, and hadrosaurs that roamed the Gobi Desert about 65 to 70 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous.

Although arid and cold today, the Gobi Desert was once a humid and diverse floodplain with dense forest and river channels.