US fossil-hunter faces jail for theft of dinosaur bones

A commercial fossil hunter, whose discovery of the world’s best-preserved dinosaur brought scientific acclaim, will serve 60 days in a US jail for stealing raptor bones from private land.

Nathan Murphy, a self-taught paleontologist, was convicted in March of felony theft for taking the raptor fossil from a ranch in northern Montana.

He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 9 in a separate federal case involving more fossils taken from Bureau of Land Management land.

In 2000, Murphy discovered a mummified, 77-million-year-old duckbilled hadrosaur known as Leonardo, which is considered the best preserved dinosaur in the world.

The bones of the turkey-sized prehistoric raptor at the heart of his theft conviction were found by one of Murphy’s workers in 2002. Authorities have seized the bones.