Famed Mont. fossil hunter to admit dinosaur crimes (AP)

[Yahoo! News]

AP - A Montana paleontologist whose past dinosaur digs brought widespread acclaim intends to plead guilty to stealing fossils from federal land.

The change of plea motion from Nathan Murphy follows state and federal investigations into his alleged attempts to cash in on the highly lucrative fossil market.

Murphy, 51, is a self-taught dinosaur expert who spent much of the last two decades searching for bones in central Montana's Hell Creek formation — a rocky badlands once stalked by the fearsome tyrannosaurus rex. In 2000, he famously discovered a mummified, 77-million-year-old duckbilled hadrosaur known as Leonardo, considered the best preserved in the world.

But after previously denying wrongdoing, court documents filed Wednesday show Murphy has reached a plea deal on a federal charge that he stole bones from public land near Malta. Prosecutors have not disclosed how many were taken.

He faced up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

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