WHAT A HEEL: Prosecutors Have Bone To Pick With Paleontologist
Renowned paleontologist Nate Murphy, 51, who discovered an unusually well-preserced 77-million-year-old duckbilled hadrosaur in 2000, pleaded guilty to stealing dinosaur fossils from federal land in MT, reports The Associated Press:
[He] pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Great Falls under a plea agreement that would not seek jail time when he's sentenced July 9. Murphy would have faced up to 10 years in prison, a fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release. …
[I]n 1994 … he was accused of removing a dinosaur fossil nicknamed "Elvis" from U.S. Bureau of Land Management land without a permit. No charges were filed in that case. …
Murphy, a self-taught paleontologist … runs a private fossil-hunting business based in Billings.
Comments