Nicolas Cage Once Out Bid Leo DiCaprio On A Stolen Dinosaur Skull… Here’s Where It Is Now
It’s no surprise that Hollywood life comes with luxury and leisure, and that’s certainly true when it comes to Nicolas Cage.
From movies as old as 1987 Raising Arizona to more recent ones like Running with the Devil, Nicolas Cage has had quite a long and impressive career.
Perhaps one of Cage’s most notable moments is how much impact the movie franchise National Treasure must have had on him, as he once outbid Leonardo DiCaprio on a 70-million-year-old dinosaur skull at a Beverly Hills auction.
With Great Wealth, Comes Great Spending
It’s no surprise that Hollywood life comes with luxury and leisure, and that’s certainly true when it comes to Nicolas Cage.
From his $15.7 million dollar estate in Newport, Rhode Island, to his European castles which he purchased for a total of $12.3 million dollars, or gigantic car collection, Nicolas is no stranger to the finer things in life.
With purchases like that, the Hollywood star found himself battling with debt. He owed the IRS $6.3 million dollars in property taxes and lost over $120 million dollars in net worth.
Cage apparently doesn’t regret all of his past investments. In an interview with the New York Times, he stated: “You have good investments and bad investments. The good investments came from personal interest and my honest enjoyment of the history”.
In addition to the list of properties he owns, he has made some bizarre purchases in the past. Some of those purchases include a nine-foot-tall burial tomb, shrunken pygmy heads, a pet octopus, a haunted house, and a couple of other things you don’t usually see people buying.
Yet none of his previous purchases compare to the one he made back in 2007. Paying more than 270,000$, Nicolas Cage outbid Leonardo Dicaprio for the skull of a Tarbosaurus Bataar, a close relative of the more famous species Tyrannosaurus Rex, at the I.M. Chait auction house in Beverly Hills.
The Truth Behind the Skull
Sadly, Nicolas did not get the news that the skull was actually stolen when he won the bid for it. In fact, the news came 7 years later when he was contacted by the Department of Homeland Security regarding the skull.
In 2012, a self-proclaimed “commercial paleontologist” by the name of Erik Prokopi was arrested by authorities and charged with illegal transportation and selling of stolen items.
Apparently, the skull was stolen from the Gobi desert in Mongolia and sold to the auction house by Prokopi.
It was later discovered that Prokopi was responsible for the theft of multiple other fossils and artifacts. He ended up aiding prosecutors in the recovery of at least 17 fossils as part of his guilty plea.
From Mongolia, To America, And All The Way Back
Unfortunately, it’s no surprise that a lot of fossils and artifacts in different countries are subject to theft. Luckily enough, neither the auction house nor Nicolas faced any charges.
After being contacted by the Department of Homeland Security back in 2014, Cage’s publicist, Alex Schack, announced that Cage agreed to return the skull should it be determined stolen.
In 2015, a civil forfeiture complaint was filed by the office of the US attorney in Manhattan Preet Bharara, requesting that the skull be returned after investigators proved that the piece was stolen by Erik Prokopi. Provided with proof, Cage then went through his agreement and returned the skull to the Mongolian government.
As reported by Reuters, Bharara said: “Each of these fossils represents a culturally and scientifically important artifact looted from its rightful owner.”
In 2014, Prokopi was sentenced to 3 months in prison. Bharara even described Prokopi as a “one-man black market in prehistoric fossils.”
After serving his time, Propoki moved on to live alongside his second wife on a decommissioned WWII navy tugboat which the couple beautifully remodeled in Savannah Georgia.
Cage told the New York Times: “The dinosaur skull was an unfortunate thing because I did spend $276,000 on that. I bought it at a legitimate auction and found out it was abducted from Mongolia illegally, and then I had to give it back. Of course it should be awarded to its country of origin. But who knew? Plus, I never got my money back, so that stank.”
A paleontologist by the name of Kevin Padian at the University of California, Berkley, told the New York Times in an interview regarding the selling of the T-Bataar skull back in 2007: “We’re losing science, we’re losing education, we’re losing valuable specimens.”
A lot of fossils nowadays are stolen, smuggled, and sold off to private collectors only to never be seen again. That’s why we’re glad the world has people like Nicolas Cage who value and understand the scientific and educational importance of such artifacts.
