Spinosaurid fossil bought by Stuttgart institution in 1991 has been the subject of a long restitution campaign
It is a 113-million-year-old bone of contention.
After Stuttgart’s museum of natural history bought a fossilised dinosaur skull in 1991, researchers found it was the most complete spinosaurid skull known to date, belonging to a previously unknown genus of the huge meat-eating dinosaurs.
Palaeontologists studying the skull in 1996 dubbed the genus Irritator – reflecting the annoyance they felt when they discovered the snout had been tinkered with – and the particular species challengeri, after Professor Challenger from Arthur Conan Doyle’s dinosaur adventure novel, The Lost World.
But as study after study was published, other interested parties were watching with irritations of their own: experts in Brazil, where the skull is believed to have originated.
