Tarbosaurus bataar goes home again

How do you ship a 70-million-year-old fossilized dinosaur back to the land it was smuggled out of? Very, very carefully. From Popular Science:

"You'd take all the bones apart, and all the bones go in individual cases," Kenneth Lacovara, a Drexel University paleontologist, says. Researchers can easily build made-to-measure plywood cases for the bone pieces, cushioning the fossils with foam. "We use packing peanuts. We use foam that is meant for home insulation," Lacovara says. "Sometimes we use the foam that you'll see in, like, expensive camera cases." What foam he and his lab members use depends on the size of the bone, he says. [...] A few paleontologists rely on a Chicago-based company, called Rocket Cargo, that specializes in shipping for rock bands. "They're used to shipping big things, and they're used to dealing with odd cargo," Lacovara says. The Mongolian Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism will be responsible for shipping the Tarbosaur, but the ministry doesn't yet know where it'll get funding, whether the T. bataar will go by air or by sea, or many other details, says Minister Tsedevdamba Oyungerel. "Logistical talks just started but nothing is clearly cemented yet," she wrote in an email.

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