SANTIAGO, Sept 25 (Reuters) – Customs officials in Chile discovered and seized more than 200 fossils of ammonites in a shipping container from Madagascar that had been declared as containing household ornaments, the customs authority of the South American country said on Friday.
Ammonites are mollusks closely related to octopuses and squids that became extinct during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, a major mass extinction that wiped out all of the non-avian dinosaurs around 66 million years ago.
The seized ammonites, which date back around 110 million years, were found among the cargo of a container shipped from China supposedly carrying chains, pendants, and glass household ornaments, Chile’s National Customs Directorate said.
The “protected species discovered by Customs arrived in cardboard boxes, wrapped in newspapers and magazines from Madagascar,” the agency said in a statement.
Specialists from the San Antonio Museum of Natural History in Chile confirmed that the items were genuine fossils.
Chile’s customs authority said it is waiting for a response to an inquiry sent to the government of Madagascar to confirm the fossils’ origin and determine whether the African country will formally request their repatriation.
(Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Writing by Paolo Laudani; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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