Evidence from a western Massachusetts crime is now in the custody of the Beneski Museum of Natural History at Amherst College.
Massachusetts Environmental Police said Thursday they were careful as they made the unusual delivery of a slab of stone containing a fossil trackway, with dinosaur footprints dating back at least 180 million years.
More recently, about 15 years ago, a poacher was caught chiseling out the fossil from a property in Gill, and charged with a Colonial-era crime of "theft of stone."
In criminal cases, evidence is returned to the victim of a crime -- when possible.
“We rarely have a situation like this,” said Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Abdal-Khabir of the environmental police. “[Giving the fossil to the museum] is in the best interest of the commonwealth, where it can be viewed, researched and studied.”
Geologists would rather the fossil have stayed where it was, but said for research purposes it's important it joins the museum’s other fossils also found in the Connecticut River Valley.