The Dinosaur Artist

by Paige Williams

  Not long after the T. bataar auction, David Herskowitz was fired from Heritage Auctions, though not, he says, for the bataar matter. He still works as enthusiastically as ever as a natural history broker. Before the bataar case, “I thought it was okay to take something from a consigner knowing that if I needed the paperwork, he’d give me the paperwork; only because I figured it was a lot of hassle to get all the paperwork together…,” he said. “I didn’t want to put that burden on somebody because usually they were in a hurry, on deadline and all. So I learned that you have to have the paperwork.”

  The buyer of the T. bataar skeleton was a New York City tax lawyer and developer in his seventies named Coleman Burke, who owned a former cold-storage warehouse on the Hudson River in West Chelsea that once housed a notorious 1980s nightclub called Tunnel. Burke, an avid outdoorsman, geology enthusiast, fossil hunter, and Explorer Club member, planned to mount the dinosaur on the cavernous ground floor. He called his near purchase “the ultimate antiquing.”

  Various auction houses killed their standalone natural history divisions after the T. bataar case. Heritage Auctions deleted many of its archived listings involving dinosaurs, and I.M. Chait likewise appeared to have scrubbed its website of Mongolian fossils. In June 2016, one of Izzy Chait’s sons, Joseph, was sentenced to a year and a day in prison and fined $10,000 for conspiring to smuggle at least a million dollars’ worth of wildlife products made with materials from protected species including elephant, rhinoceros, and coral. The case was brought by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe and U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in the Southern District of New York.

  Once in office, Donald Trump fired Preet Bharara, some think because Bharara was preparing to investigate him. Bharara accepted a teaching position at New York University, launched a podcast, and became an on-air political analyst for CNN. In 2015, Sharon Levin left the Department of Justice after many years to become a partner at the white-shoe New York law firm WilmerHale. On her way out the door, a former colleague called her “the Babe Ruth of forfeiture”—by the time she left the DOJ, she had overseen nearly $14 billion in asset forfeitures and returned over $9 billion to the victims of crime. Martin Bell stayed on with the Southern District of New York as an assistant U.S. attorney, working in the unit that prosecutes public corruption.

  Homeland Security agents confiscated Mongolian dinosaur fossils from dealers in several states. At least two dealers were charged criminally. One of the surrendered bataar skulls was connected to the professional golfer Phil Mickelson—his wife reportedly had seen a specimen on display at a shop in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and bought it for him as a birthday gift. Nicolas Cage also surrendered his T. bataar skull to the federal government. Prokopi heard that Leonardo DiCaprio had “traded up,” swapping his bataar skull for rex. The United States altogether repatriated about three dozen Mongolian dinosaurs, many of which went on display at the Central Museum of Mongolian Dinosaurs.

  Hollis Butts: who knows. At last check, he was still in Japan, posting to Facebook about sea urchins, tax returns, and the vernal equinox.

  Chris Moore, Eric Prokopi’s partner in the T. bataar sale, went on as a fossil hunter on the Jurassic Coast of England, never commenting publicly about the case. He declined to discuss it when approached at the big October fossil show in Munich, and again at the annual spring fossil show in Lyme Regis, and again at home in Charmouth one drizzly morning in May. The BBC recently featured him in a new documentary about fossil hunting, starring the United Kingdom’s best-known naturalist, Sir David Attenborough. In 2017, Mary Anning got a new museum wing in the refurbished redbrick museum on Cockmoile Square in Lyme Regis. Many of her life mementos are on display there. Her paleontological discoveries can still be seen at the Natural History Museum in London, and her grave can be visited in the St. Michael’s churchyard in Lyme, overlooking the sea.

  Peter Tompa, one of Prokopi’s two civil attorneys, continued to work as a lawyer in Washington, DC. Michael McCullough joined with William Pearlstein in the spring of 2014 to create the boutique New York law firm Pearlstein & McCullough, to focus on the international art market. In the summer of 2016, they took on a new partner, Prokopi’s former criminal lawyer, Georges Lederman, becoming Pearlstein McCullough & Lederman.

  After the Tyrannosaurus Sue case, Peter Larson of the Black Hills Institute blamed everyone but himself—the government above all. Then he decided that, emotionally, he would survive a felony conviction and prison only by assuming responsibility for his part in the mess. Those who wallowed in self-pity only suffered more and caused the suffering of others, he’d noticed. Larson wanted to get on with his life with less bitterness and less of a victim mentality. He didn’t know Eric Prokopi well, yet hoped that he would one day feel the same.

  Frank Garcia moved to South Dakota and married Deborah Vaccaro on a picturesque covered bridge. They regularly hunt fossils, and keep a karaoke machine in their basement. Recently, they opened a natural history shop in Custer, called Good Karma, where Frank, when he isn’t ranting on Facebook, also sells copies of his books. To commemorate his Leisey discovery, an historical monument was erected in the spring of 2018 at the old shell pit in Ruskin, Florida. Frank once told a reporter, “When I die, don’t cry for me, man, because I really enjoyed the hell out of living it. Weep for somebody that didn’t get to do the things I have done.”

  President Tsakhia Elbegdorj left office in 2017 and was succeeded by Khaltmaa Battulga, a wealthy Democratic Party cabinet minister and former pro wrestler. The Mongolian penchant for political gossip carried into the current administration. Battulga was suspected of trying to “buy the very same [voting] machines from America” in order to “count his own votes,” and the University College London anthropologists Bumochir and Empson noted that Elbegdorj’s supposed “‘ownership’ and control over the black boxes” extended to “speculation about his control over the whole [2017] elections.” They wrote that “in this murky world of political wrangling people speculate that Elbegdorj is in fact behind the appointment” of certain candidates, “having deliberately supported them at various times, and put them in place to rig the election” in order to protect himself from “future corruption charges.” In March 2018, when President Trump announced a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Elbedorj lobbied for the meeting to take place in the “neutral territory” of Mongolia. Battulga, meanwhile, had at one point dismissed the importance of diplomatic relations with the United States by saying America was “too far away.” Perhaps the Trump administration felt the same way: as of May 2018, a new U.S. ambassador to Mongolia still hadn’t been nominated.

  Robert Painter continued to practice law in Houston and to do business in Mongolia. In early 2015, his professional relationship with the Mongolian government came into question in the Ulaanbaatar media: five members of parliament alleged that a cabinet secretary added over 17 billion tugrik (over $7 million today) to the federal budget in order to pay the Painter Law Firm for ongoing “legal advice” regarding the development of Oyu Tolgoi, the Gobi copper mine. A little over $260,000 had been paid so far in 2014, as Painter’s annual salary, the media reported. “This is an act of embezzling public funds collected from taxpayers as well as an illegal spending on an unauthorized objective,” the UB Post reported. Painter acknowledged that he was paid for his services, but said the $7 million figure was preposterous, calling the claims another example of political mudslinging. Regarding the T. bataar case, he said President Elbegdorj was chagrined to learn of the criminal charges against Eric Prokopi and wished the arrest had never happened—feelings that were never made public. “The president feels bad for him,” Painter said in early 2018. “The president never wanted him to go to jail. He just wanted the dinosaur back. He respects what happens under American law, but he wasn’t interested in vengeance.”

  Just before introducing the dinosaur bus to Mongolia, Bolor and her family took a road trip out west, stopping at Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the
Utah–Colorado border. President Woodrow Wilson created the monument in 1915 to preserve a Carnegie Museum quarry that had produced Allosaurus, Apatosaurus, Camarasaurus, Diplodocus, and other Jurassic dinosaurs. Bolor met a science enthusiast there named Thea Artemis Kinyon Boodhoo, who, as a volunteer under the park’s longtime paleontologist, Dan Chure, was helping to digitally map the quarry, to make specimens available for public view and scientific study.

  Boodhoo was the daughter of a novelist, Malcolm Brenner, who became known some years ago for his love affair with a bottlenose dolphin. It would be easy to make jokes about that or to shorthand Brenner’s life—ex-Wiccan, “zoophilia advocate,” etc.—but as always the truth is complicated, and, well, feel free to check all that out on your own time. Boodhoo grew up on breakfast burritos and dreamcatchers in Gallup, New Mexico, then moved to California, where the ancient forests and redwoods fascinated her. Her mother was a scholar “whose love of rare old books gave me the notion that old meant valuable,” Boodhoo once wrote. “I spent days out on the cracked pavement destroying new coins with rocks and borrowed tools to make them worth more.” She had hoped to become a paleontologist but had pursued advertising instead, for the financial security; lately, though, she had returned to her original love with a résumé that read “Science Advocate and Creative Professional,” along with “Digital storyteller. Branding and marketing specialist.”

  The minute Boodhoo met Bolor in Utah, she asked permission to write about her and offered to help with the Mongolia outreach project. Before long, Boodhoo, who now lives in San Francisco, registered the Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs in California as a 501(c)3 nonprofit and developed its public face, updating the website, logo, and social media presence. In February 2016, Boodhoo and Bolor launched an Indiegogo campaign that raised $46,000, allowing them to return to the Gobi and work on expanding the program. An engaging writer, Boodhoo also placed positive articles about Bolor in publications such as Earth magazine.

  Bolor had backed off her crusade to bring all Mongolian fossils back to Mongolia. Now she focused on building a dinosaur museum at the Flaming Cliffs. In March 2017, she and Boodhoo traveled to Bayanzag with Dan Chure and Walt Crimm, a Philadelphia architect, to scout out siting possibilities. Boodhoo likened Bayanzag to a “sort of holy pilgrimage for dinosaur enthusiasts,” though lamented the lack of information at the site—“no museum, no visitors center, no marked trails, no signs.” Bolor, Boodhoo, and their colleagues envisioned a park not unlike Dinosaur National Monument or Badlands National Park, where visitors follow fossil trails and learn about prehistoric animals and plants. The museum would have to be privately funded—that part hadn’t been worked out, but Bolor had already received the local government’s permission to proceed.

  Standing at the edge of the Flaming Cliffs, the scouting team thought about their various concerns—erosion, wind, flash floods, temperature. “All the things that make Bayanzag such an excellent place to find dinosaurs also make it an exceptionally challenging place to build a dinosaur museum,” Boodhoo later wrote. The building should blend in with the environment, they all agreed. Despite the temptation to create an iconic structure “the real masterpiece at Bayanzag has already been created,” she added, “by nature.”

  By summer 2018, Bolor and Boodhoo weren’t much working together anymore, and Boodhoo had taken a full-time job as a copy writer. Bolor signed on as a National Geographic Expeditions “expert” for a twelve-day tour of Mongolia, and continued to promote the Institute for the Study of Mongolian Dinosaurs.

  The court agreed to let Eric serve out the back half of his six-month sentence in Betty’s garage apartment in Kingsmill, on house arrest, wearing an ankle monitor. He would be free to leave during certain daylight hours, but curfew would require him to be home by six. A wireless network would alert federal authorities if he ventured beyond Betty’s property. He had decided to wear jeans until the ankle cuff was off, so the children wouldn’t ask questions.

  Betty was the one who picked him up at prison. Amanda was tending her booth at Bizarre Bazaar and waiting for him there, with Greyson and Rivers, on December 5, 2014, a forty-eight-degree Friday. He walked out with a cardboard box of possessions, wearing prison-issue jeans and white sneakers and a heavy beard. He set the box on the sidewalk and walked into Betty’s wide-flung arms, and then she drove him to Richmond. When he rounded the corner of the Everything Earth booth and saw his children, he dropped to his knees and they jumped into his arms squealing, and stroking his funny beard. “Hey, guys!” he kept saying.

  When he got to Betty’s house in Williamsburg, it was as if he’d never left. Grey and Rivers hurried to show him their WELCOME HOME DADDY banner and to break out the Wii, Eric telling Grey it wasn’t polite to give his avatars names like Poop. Later, he settled into the garage apartment, a nice-sized room with a kitchenette and a windowed bath. Amanda and the kids had brought in a mini Christmas tree and a poinsettia and stocked the fridge with Coke Zero, the bathroom with soap, shaving cream, and razors. Amanda came to check on him. Looking around at all the boxes he’d moved there before going to Petersburg Low, she said, “Aren’t you anxious to put all this stuff away?”

  “Yeah, but I haven’t had a chance yet,” he said. “I have to figure out what to do about a vehicle.” The van was broken.

  Amanda pulled Eric’s diary from his prison box and glanced through it, and said, “I mean, walking the track after eating ice cream. While the rest of us are going a hundred miles an hour it’s like, ‘Went to lunch, had a nap.’ Prison sounds relaxing to me at this point.”

  “Try taking a nap right outside the door of a public bathroom at a rest area,” Eric said. “That’s how relaxing it was.”

  Amanda forgot about the diary and went back to the topic of boxes. “I would unpack everything right now.” Pointing, she said, “I’d be like, Goodwill, Goodwill, Goodwill.”

  Saturday was December drizzle but nearly 60 degrees, and Eric took the kids fossil hunting. Grey wore a T-shirt and jeans. Rivers had on a white shirt with a Peter Pan collar, a black cardigan, a plaid skirt, black tights, and boots, as if she were on her way to a party. The Colonial Parkway was browns and golds. They crossed the James River on a ferry named the Surry and then drove to where the road dead-ended. After passing an old red barn where someone had hung a huge Christmas wreath, they walked a rocky path through the woods, down to the river’s edge. Eric and Tyler had hunted fossils on the riverbank many times on their own and with the kids. It was one of their favorite places.

  The day was so overcast one of the kids asked, “Where’s the moon?” Fog pressed on the river as a soft rain started to fall. An anchored skiff sat empty on the glassy water like a scene in a painting. The air smelled of pine. Eric and the kids walked the water line, stepping over slick logs and mossy rocks, pushing their way through a stand of bulrushes. Cockleburs caught on their clothes. They came to the cut of a looming bluff, where thousands of broken fossils from the York River Formation shone in the earth.

  “There! No, there!” Grey yelled as they went along. “It’s a tarantula egg!” (Magnolia seed.) “Mud castle!” (Cypress root.) He found a piece of a whale bone and a scrap of coral. Eric found, upturned in the mud where others had missed it, a nearly whole fossil Chesapecten jeffersoni.

  Rivers picked up a smaller, perfectly formed shell, leaving its imprint in the sand. Eric looked at the impression and told her, “That’s called a mold.”

  There was a lag of a couple of weeks until the ankle monitor went on and house arrest started. Eric had been calling Tyler, with little response. Normally fluent in Harlequin romance flourishes—“We declared our love for one another” and “tender moments” and “crumbled to the ground in each other’s arms”—she now had just one thing to say: “Go back to your wife.”

  Instead, he went to a pawn shop and bought a turquoise ring for $25. He wasn’t supposed to leave Virginia, but Amanda rented him a car under her name so he could drive to Gainesville and s
how up at Tyler’s door. At Paynes Prairie, not far from Serenola, Eric pulled out the ring and asked her to marry him.

  It had hurt Tyler to know that Eric had considered getting back with Amanda and lied about it, even if he’d done so to spare her feelings. By now, she had a new boyfriend and they were planning to move to North Carolina. She declined the marriage proposal and sent Eric on his way. He pawned the ring right there in Gainesville and headed straight back north.

  Halfway up the Eastern Seaboard, he received a text—Tyler. She had made a mistake. Within days she had packed up her car and returned to Virginia.

  In Gloucester, Eric bought another pawn-shop ring. One afternoon as he and Tyler were driving down the Colonial Parkway, he stopped at the York River and proposed again, and this time she said yes.

  What they wanted to do now was hang out, enjoy the kids, build up a bit of money, and one day hunt fossils again, maybe dinosaurs in Wyoming. As the days ticked by, they thought about where to live. Typical housing wasn’t an option; Eric wouldn’t survive the credit check. A mortgage was also out of the question. He started watching eBay and Craigslist for a houseboat.