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Paleontologist Gets 60 Days for Stealing Bones

Matthew Brown (AP)

Amateur paleontologist Nathan Murphy, a commercial fossil hunter whose discovery of the world's best-preserved dinosaur brought scientific acclaim, will serve 60 days in jail for stealing an ancient raptor fossil from private land. Sentencing in a separate federal case involving Murphy's theft of at least a dozen more fossils is scheduled for July 9.

Since he was charged with felony theft last year, Murphy has argued a series of honest mistakes led to the joint federal-state criminal investigation that brought his conviction. But in an interview Monday with The Associated Press, he acknowledged concealing the truth about where the raptor bones came from — and suggested he was not the only fossil hunter to make false claims.

"I understand my responsibility and I hope others who were involved in it will take it to heart," he said. "The investigation created a poster boy. They're going to have Nate Murphy to hold up to the public and say, 'Don't pick up nothing on public land, and know where you are at.' They needed somebody like me."

The self-taught owner of a Billings business that lets people pay to dig for fossils, Murphy, 51, was convicted in March on the state charge. Investigators say he secretly removed the bones from a ranch in the Malta area and later claimed they came from elsewhere.

Murphy's work includes unearthing a mummified duckbill dinosaur dubbed Leonardo, considered the world's best-preserved fossil. The bones of the turkey-sized prehistoric raptor at the heart of his theft conviction were found by one of his workers in 2002.

A former colleague said Murphy's fall from the pinnacle of the paleontological world was deserved, given his preference for profit over science.

"Nate was truly gifted," said Joe Iacuzzo with the Leonardo Project, an organization set up to promote the fossil that brought Murphy fame. "Very few people have discovered what he discovered, but he was compelled to lie about it. He unequivocally was taking fossils from various sites, including the Hammond ranch (where the raptor was found), and selling them," Iacuzzo said.

Murphy must serve his 60 days at some point during the next six months. He said Monday that he is likely to conduct another dinosaur dig in the interim. At the sentencing Wednesday, District Judge John C. McKeon imposed a $2,500 fine and $650 in restitution. A possible five-year jail term was deferred, with the paleontologist to remain on probation. Murphy's attorney, Michael Moses, said jail time had not been expected under the terms of Murphy's guilty plea. But he said the judge made a fair decision.

"What Nate did wasn't good," Moses said. "The judge recognized the significance of it. You don't get to put your hand in the cookie jar, take out a cookie and then six months later put the cookie back in." A spokeswoman for the Montana attorney general did not have an immediate comment on the case. Law enforcement officials and other paleontologists have said the case shed light on the chronic problem of fossil theft, which is driven by the increasingly high prices that rare specimens bring on the open market. More than 200 law enforcement incidents involving fossils were tallied by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management over the last decade, federal officials say.

The bones of the raptor that Murphy stole were initially nicknamed "Julie" after the sister of an Australian, Mark Thompson, who found the bones while working with Murphy's son on a ranch in Phillips County in August, 2002.

Thompson was asked to keep quiet about the find, according to court records. Later, after Murphy gained possession of the fossil, he gave it another nickname, "Sid Vicious," and said he had found it in 2006 near Saco, MT.

By then, Murphy had sought to have molds of the fossils made that could have brought up to $400,000, through the sale of casts on the retail fossil market.

He was convicted in April on a separate federal charge of theft of public property, for stealing more than a dozen fossilized dinosaur bones from BLM land near Malta without having a permit. His July sentencing will be before U.S. District Judge Sam E. Haddon.

While he awaits his time in jail, Murphy said he plans to continue leading dinosaur excavation tours, with a monthlong expedition scheduled in the summer near Grass Range.

Murphy resigned from his job as curator of the Judith River Dinosaur Foundation, a private museum in Malta, in June, 2007, as the federal-state investigation into his activities began.

He said his conviction had hurt his fossil excavation business, and that most of this summer's participants will be student workers who will not bring in any money.

"I'm going to just move on," he said. "I have a lot of people that have supported me over the years that have continued to support me."

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.