Tough Bone
Cases unlock in order, like levels. This is case 77 of 100.
Rockies Museum of Paleontology, Bozeman, Montana, 10:40 pm. Paleontologist Harriet Sloan tapped her fingers on the juvenile Tyrannosaurus skull nicknamed Mabel and heard a hollow sound. It was painted plaster.
At 5 pm, on the last guided tour, dozens of people photographed the real skull in its display case. The museum closed at 6 pm, and Mabel was due to ship out at 6 am for an exhibition in Denver.
After closing, only three people had access to the building. One of them traded 66 million years for a plaster cast.
The museum's meeting room, shelves of catalogued bones, a Triceratops skeleton peeking through the glass door.
Suspects
Harriet SloanPaleontologist and curator, 46
Ambrose WhitfieldRancher and donor of the fossil, 71
Lyle BrandtFossil preparator, 52
The real case
The dinosaur smuggled out of Mongolia
New York, United States, 2012
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
In May 2012, a nearly complete skeleton of Tarbosaurus bataar, an Asian relative of Tyrannosaurus, was auctioned in New York for more than a million dollars. The government of Mongolia protested: the species is found only in the Gobi Desert, and the country's law prohibits the export of fossils.
The investigation showed that a Florida fossil dealer had imported the bones with false declarations of origin and value. He pleaded guilty, and the skeleton was returned to Mongolia in 2013. Twenty years earlier, the dispute over the Tyrannosaurus "Sue" had already shown the value and the legal confusion surrounding such fossils.
The game borrows the dinosaur skeleton diverted for a multimillion-dollar sale to a collector. The swap for a cast, the characters and the outcome are fiction.
Sources
Case glossary
Words from this case you might not know.
- preparator
- A museum technician who frees fossils from rock, repairs them and makes casts and replicas.