SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY

Famed Montana Dinosaur Hunter Gets Probation

from the Minneapolis Star Tribune (Registration Required)

GREAT FALLS, Mont. (Associated Press) -- Renowned dinosaur hunter Nathan Murphy was sentenced Wednesday to four months in a halfway house and three years probation after pleading guilty to stealing fossils.

Murphy was accused of stealing 13 dinosaur bones from central Montana's Hell Creek badlands in 2006. He pleaded guilty in April to theft of government property.

... The case provided a rare glimpse into the black-market fossil trade while sinking the reputation of the 51-year-old, self-taught paleontologist who rose to fame on his discovery in 2000 of Leonardo, a mummified, 77-million-year-old duck-billed hadrosaur considered the world's best preserved dinosaur.