GREAT FALLS – Federal prosecutors say renowned dinosaur hunter and convicted fossil thief Nathan Murphy should spend a year behind bars as a warning to others that illegally taking and selling bones won’t be tolerated.
Murphy was to be sentenced in U.S. District Court Wednesday afternoon for stealing 13 dinosaur bones from central Montana’s Hell Creek badlands in 2006.
The case is providing a rare glimpse into the black-market fossil trade — and sinking the reputation of the 51-year-old self-taught paleontologist who rose to fame on his discovery of the world’s best-preserved fossil, Leonardo, in 2000.
Murphy was sentenced last month to 60 days in jail on a separate state count involving a stolen raptor fossil. Federal prosecutors want him to serve an additional 10 months on the federal charge, for a year total behind bars.
“Murphy’s sentence should send a message to those that engage in for-profit resource hunting and amateurs alike,” U.S. Attorney William Mercer wrote as part of the government’s sentencing recommendation. “If you break the law, you will be prosecuted to its fullest extent.”
The government is also seeking $17,325 in restitution for damage done to public lands during Murphy’s illegal excavations.
Murphy is seeking a far more lenient sentence — three years probation plus restitution equal to the government’s recommendation.
Notwithstanding the fact that he sought to have casts made from at least one stolen fossil to make and sell reproductions, Murphy says the fossils themselves were never at risk and were later turned over to a nonprofit foundation.
“This case is a lesson well learned,” Murphy’s attorney, Michael Moses, wrote in documents submitted to the court prior to sentencing. “Mr. Murphy’s reputation and status within the paleontology community has been severely affected.”
Murphy runs a business in Billings that charges customers $200 per day to participate in dinosaur digs. He was paleontology director at the Dinosaur Field Station in Malta for 15 years before resigning in July 2007 — about the same time state and federal authorities began investigating his activities.
During his sentencing on the state theft charge, Murphy was given six months to serve his jail time, and said at the time said he wanted to delay his incarceration until he could host one more paid dinosaur expedition this summer.
Murphy’s theft case was still pending when President Barack Obama in March signed a law setting a penalty of up to five years in jail for stealing bones or other fossils from public land. The Paleontological Resource Protection Act is the country’s first-ever law to specifically protect fossils.
Paleontologists and some public lands managers had sought the measure for years, but it came too late for Murphy’s case. In the federal case, he pleaded guilty in April to a single count of theft of government property.