Mongolia

Mongolia's constitution and its heritage laws (the 1924 declaration, the 2001 Law on Protection of Cultural Heritage and successors) make all fossils the property of the state and prohibit their export. There is no lawful commercial channel: Tarbosaurus, Protoceratops, Velociraptor, Oviraptor eggs and the rest of the Gobi fauna on the market left illegally, usually via China.

The Tarbosaurus bataar case (2012–2013) is the precedent: a mounted skeleton sold at auction in New York for over $1 million was seized under a civil forfeiture action, the dealer pleaded guilty to smuggling, and the skeleton was returned. Since then the US has returned dozens of Mongolian specimens, and Mongolian embassies actively pursue material seen at shows and online.

No pre-ban date helps here: the prohibition predates the trade. The only Mongolian material a dealer can legally hold is something with documented export permission from the Mongolian government, which is not issued for sale. Stratum's Market gate blocks listings with Mongolia as country of origin for fossils.

The same is true of Mongolian dinosaur eggs sold as “Asian” or “Chinese”: the Djadokhta and Nemegt eggs are distinctive and museum staff recognise them.

Sources

Cite this article

Stratum Study. "Mongolia" (Law & ethics). Stratum Study pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-16. https://stratum.black/study/law/mongolia. Accessed 2026-09-20.

BibTeX · CSL-JSON

@misc{stratum-mongolia,
  title        = {Mongolia},
  author       = {{Stratum Study}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://stratum.black/study/law/mongolia}},
  year         = {2026},
  note         = {Law & ethics article, Stratum Study pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-16; sources: stratum. Accessed 2026-09-20.}
}

Citations carry the pack version and the article's as-of date so they resolve to the same text later. The facts themselves belong to the sources listed below; cite those for the science.