Stop your stupid eyes from reading past this sentence if you want to keep the image of a sweaty, long-haired, tank-top-wearing, Con Air–area Nic Cage heroically flying a stolen dinosaur skeleton back to Mongolia in, let’s say, a Harrier jet. I warned you! According to his publicist, Alex Schack, Nicolas Cage purchased a $276,000 Tyrannosaurus bataar skull back in 2007, because he’s cool as hell, from the I.M. Chait gallery in Los Angeles. In 2014, the Department of Homeland Security contacted the National Treasure 3 actor to inform him that the skull had been illegally taken from Mongolia. Cage voluntarily relinquished the fossil, and last week, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara filed a civil-forfeiture complaint to take possession of it. Being a morally upstanding person and returning stolen property is cool, but kicking a warlord in the face, grabbing the skull, and sliding down, let’s say, a pyramid owned by Nic Cage himself would have been cooler. We’re all going to remember it that way, anyway, right? Great.
