Lenny

At first I thought it was some kind of joke, maybe a reference to Cage’s National Treasure movies in which he stole the Declaration of Independence, which he really didn’t do, by the way. But it turns out Cage really bought a dinosaur skull, which turned out to have been smuggled out of Mongolia. Cage evidently didn’t know it was stolen when he bought it from a Beverly Hills gallery called I.M. Chait in 2007. For $276k. Really.

He only found out about the nefarious providence of the artifact in 2014, when a civil forfeiture complaint was filed to get the Tyrannosaurus Tarbosaurus skull back. The Manhattan attorney who filed the suit, on behalf of the Mongolian gubmint, was named Preet Bharara. Really. And it also turns out Cage bought the skull at an auction, in which he outbid Leonardo DiCaprio for it. Really.

I’m adding reallys a lot because this is the kind of thing that sounds made up, and as far as I can tell, this is a legit Indiana Jones-type story about a stolen artifact. Which, in truth, is what the US gubmint did in the Indiana Jones movie, with the Ark of the Covenant. They stole it. They probably still have it. Not really.

Anyway, according to The Guardian, the Mongolian skull wasn’t the first illegally obtained item I.M. Chait sold. Those rascals. They’re not in trouble, by the way, and I have no idea why. You’d think a fancy place that sold old bones for serious jack would have someone on staff to ask potential sellers, ‘And, if you don’t mind, could you maybe provide some kind of proof that you came by this object in a legal way that won’t end with Genghis Khan riding in here lopping off heads with a sword?’ But I guess not.

I’m thinking someone at Chait should’ve asked that question of Eric Prokopi, of Gainesville, Florida, who is described in the Guardian story as a ‘convicted paleontologist.’ Prokopi, who refers to himself as a ‘commercial paleontologist,’ is quoted in the article as saying he is no ‘international bone smuggler.’ The facts, unfortunately, seem to indicate otherwise.

Bharara, the lawyer, called Prokopi a ‘one-man black market in prehistoric fossils,’ which is probably hyperbole, but not by much. Prokopi was arrested in 2012 for smuggling dinosaur skeletons out of China and Mongolia. The man has gall, I’ll give him that. He sold a bunch of dinosaur bones to a gallery in California, not to mention Lenny. That’s what investigators nicknamed the Tyrannosaurus skull Cage bought. Lenny. Really.

Prokopi eventually pled guilty to smuggling the skull out of the Gobi desert, and was sentenced to three months in prison. As part of his plea deal, Prokopi helped prosecutors recover around seventeen other burgled dinosaur fossils. Which makes me wonder how many others weren’t recovered. And where I could find them. And how much they’re worth. Not really.

Now, this story raises more questions than it answers. Why would Nicola Cage want a dinosaur skull? I know why I would want one, but still. Also, why didn’t DiCaprio bid more? Surely he could afford it. And how can TSA find my fingernail clippers and a paper clip in the bottom of my dopp kit, and can’t locate a sure enough huge dinosaur skull on a plane? And more importantly, what else are they letting through? For goodness sake.

But the best thing about this story, at least for me, is that I found it in The Guardian. A British newspaper. Founded in 1821. During the several hundred years when England was colonizing and depredating and exploiting a good bit of the planet. Paintings, sculpture, artifacts, antiquities, people, nothing was safe from the Brits. When they found something of value, they hauled it back to England. The only reason the pyramids are still in Egypt is because they’re too big to steal. Otherwise they’d be in a park in Bloomsbury, next to the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon sculptures, and Katebet’s mummy. And probably George Washington’s wooden dentures.

I’m thinking Cage should make a movie out of this story. Maybe a remake of Gone In Sixty Seconds, where instead of stealing a car named Eleanor he steals a dinosaur skull. Named Lenny. Lenny DiCaprio.

Really . . .

Kendal Hemphill is an outdoor humor columnist and minister who once mailed a knife home from Eufaula, Alabama to keep the greedy TSA agents from stealing it. Write to him at [email protected]