The French customs authorities returned to Brazil this Tuesday (24) 998 fossils illegally removed from the Araripe basin, a paleontological site located on the borders of the states of Ceará, Pernambuco and Piauí and recognized as one of the 161 world geoparks by UNESCO since 2006. .
The handover ceremony took place in the port of Havre, in Normandy, in the north of the country. The fossils date from the Cretaceous period (the last of the age of the dinosaurs, from 144 million to 65 million years ago) and were delivered in the presence of the Sub-Attorney General of the Republic Hindenburg Chateaubriand Filho, in the presence of other Brazilian authorities.
“It is important to emphasize the importance of international legal cooperation, which must be improved, but it is essential in cases of this nature. I thank all the people who contributed to the return of fossils”, said Chateubriand Filho, in a message posted on Twitter.
The items, which attract the interest of many collectors, were taken from the Araripe basin to be sold on the internet. They include fish, dinosaur remains, turtles, as well as crustaceans, insects and fossilized plants, and will be delivered to the Plácido Cidade Nuvens Paleontology Museum of the Regional University of Cariri (Urca), in Santana do Cariri, Ceará.
The material is expected to arrive in Brazil within approximately 15 days, according to Allysson Pinheiro, director of the museum who participated in the ceremony for handing over the fossils in Le Havre and spoke with the RFI when he arrived in town.
“Our agents are directly involved in the seizure, but also the return of illegally exported cultural goods,” French Customs Deputy Director General François Dutheil said in a message posted on Twitter during the ceremony.
The return of the items is part of the so-called Fortnight of Cultural Goods promoted by the French Customs, a series of events that show the agency’s action against this type of trafficking. According to the Brazilian Constitution, fossils are part of the national heritage, they cannot be owned by individuals, sold or leave the country.
The items were discovered in 2013 by French Customs officials in the port of Havre, concealed in barrels as common goods. After an expert examination, the authenticity of the fossils and the fraud were confirmed. After several years of processing in international justice, the case was concluded in February 2021. The Public Ministry of Lyon, in east-central France, then ordered restitution to Brazil.
This is not the first time that France has authorized the repatriation of fossils that fell into the hands of traffickers to be sold. In 2019, the country’s Justice authorized the return of 46 items illegally taken to Europe. The investigations began after a complaint by Brazilian paleontologist Taissa Rodrigues, a professor at the Federal University of Espírito Santo, to the Federal Public Ministry. The scientist received an alert that fossils would be for sale on eBay in 2014.
“For Brazil, the fossil is an asset of the State of the Union, and cannot be commercialized. Knowing this, Taissa, who is a great defender of fossils and this heritage, found this material being offered by doing searches on the internet. She then made the complaint to the Public Ministry”, explained Allysson Pinheiro.
“All of them come from the Araripe sedimentary basin, dating from the Cretaceous, recognized as one of the largest fossiliferous deposits of this period in the world, for its quality and quantity of fossil preservation”, he added. According to him, researchers at the University of Cariri, in Ceará, received a request to certify the authenticity of the pieces.
“We carried out technical work, proved that the material was from the Araripe basin and provided the information to the Public Ministry to complement the judicial process”. According to him, this process is important “because it recognizes that fossils, in addition to being a material asset, are a cultural asset for the Brazilian people and especially for the people of the region where they were found, in Cariri.”
