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The Woolly Mammoth will not miss its defense, but paleontologists and museum lovers will probably do so.
On Thursday, a man was sentenced to a federal prison term after being stolen – then segmented and sold – by a co-conspirator – in a mammoth fossilized defense in a museum of the Anchorage Bureau of Land Management, in Alaska.
US Judge Sharon Gleason sentenced 52-year-old Martin Elze to 33 months in federal prison and three years on parole. Elze was also ordered to pay more than $ 8,000 in restitution to the Campbell Creek Science Center.
The investigation also revealed that while incarcerated, Elze tried to influence a witness "to make false statements to the federal grand jury, in the hope that it would protect him from prosecution".
Last December, Elze pleaded guilty to a "kidnapping of a paleontological resource". His accomplice, Gary Boyd, pleaded guilty to the same charge in January and is expected to be sentenced to the federal courthouse in May.
According to a press release from the US District Attorney's Office, Elze and Boyd had opened the Campbell Creek Science Center the day before the intrusion.
The two men spoke to center staff and asked about the "weight and authenticity" of the fossil.
The next day, Elze and Boyd returned after normal working hours. Boyd broke a window with a stone – causing damage of more than $ 1,000 – and opened the center door. Then he took the defense.
The next phase of the robbery was filmed. The museum's surveillance system recorded the two men working together to take away the defense, which, according to the Associated Press, was five and one-half feet long.
Before the perpetrators are charged, museum spokeswoman Maureen Clark said Alaska Public Media the 100-pound defense was on display in a classroom in the center.
"People could come and touch it," Clark said Alaska Public Media.
Not anymore.
After stealing the defense, Elze and Boyd cut it and sold the coins.
In the court documents, federal prosecutors assessed the defense at about $ 7,000 to $ 9,000 when it was still intact. But the cost for science is harder to measure.
An indictment issued during the indictment of these men last year called the defense a paleontological resource: "[It] was preserved in or on the earth's crust, was of palaeontological interest, and provided information on the history of life on earth. "
Clark said Alaska Public Media the fossil was discovered in the 1980s on BLM lands in the Colville River area on the North Slope. The woolly mammoth became the official fossil of Alaska in 1986.
According to the National Parks Service, mammoths lived in the Pleistocene ice age and their remains can be found throughout Russia and Alaska.
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