On Thursday, US authorities allowed a shipment of huge dinosaur fossils back to Mongolia. These fossils were illegally imported in the United States after being stolen from archaeological sites in Mongolia's Gobi Desert.

The items were seized by agents from the U. S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in two separate HSI investigations into smuggled artefacts. The HSI found that the fossils were illicitly imported from Mongolia between 2005 and 2012.

The shipment for Mongolia includes 18 dinosaurs dating from 68 million to 80 million years and a fossilized egg. A repatriation ceremony was held in New York on Thursday. It was attended by dignitaries including James T. Hayes, Special Agent of Charge of HSI New York; Preet Bharara, US Attorney for New York's Southern District and Od Och, Mongolia's Ambassador to the United Nations.

Ambassador Och officially took the delivery which included- a Saurolophus Angustirostris (hadrosaur) skeleton. It was herbivorous hadrosaurs that lived during the upper Cretaceous period. One of the returned species to Mongolia includes almost complete hadrosaur skeleton.

The shipment also had an Oviraptor matrix that had remains of at least five oviraptor skeletons. Oviraptor were small dinosaurs that were half the height of a human and were able to stand on their hind legs.

An almost complete Tyrannosaurus Bataar skeleton is also part of the shipment. Tyrannosaurus Bataar was the largest carnivorous dinosaur whose habitat was the Gobi Desert in southern Mongolia.

The repatriation of the dinosaur fossils came a month after paleontologist Eric Prokopi was given imprisonment of three months and 15 months of supervised releases owing to charges of smuggling. With his co-operation, investigators were able to make the recovery of at least 17 other dinosaur skeletons.

"This is a historic moment for the US Attorney's office, in addition to being a prehistoric event", affirmed Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara. Mongolia is constructing its own 'Jurassic Park' in the form of a museum, where the items of the shipment will be displayed.