A famed paleontologist who discovered the world's best preserved dinosaur pleaded guilty Tuesday to stealing dinosaur fossils from federal land in Montana.
Nate Murphy, 51, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Great Falls under a plea agreement that would not seek jail time when he's sentenced July 9. Murphy would have faced up to 10 years in prison, a fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release.
Murphy, a self-taught paleontologist who runs a private fossil-hunting business based in Billings, gained fame in 2000 when he discovered a mummified, 77-million-year-old duckbilled hadrosaur known as Leonardo.
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