How does a fossil that was illegally smuggled out of China end up on display in Pittsburgh?
This feathered dinosaur fossil of an Anchiornis huxleyi from the late Jurassic Period is currently at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh on loan from a museum in China.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security confiscated this fossil from a dealer who tried to illegally smuggle it out of China.
Carnegie paleontologist Matt Lamanna helped Homeland Security Investigations identify the fossil as a feathered predatory dinosaur from northeastern China. It was returned in 2015, but the Chinese government loaned the fossil to the museum where it will be on display until it is returned to the Geological Museum of China in Bejiing.
