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Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world

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Speaker 1: is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an

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Speaker 1: open book, all of these amazing tales are right there

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Speaker 1: on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to

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Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. When we think of paleontology, we

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Speaker 1: think of dusty faced scientists crouching over a gaping hole

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Speaker 1: in the dirt. We think of sunlight gently illuminating a

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Speaker 1: creature that has not been seen in millions of years.

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Speaker 1: What we don't think about is crime. Real science is

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Speaker 1: not like the movies. You don't find any clone dinosaurs

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Speaker 1: wreaking havoc across an island theme park in our day.

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Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean an area like paleont apology is

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Speaker 1: free from controversy. Eric Procopy should know. He was one

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Speaker 1: of the field's most controversial figures to date. He started

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Speaker 1: collecting fossils and animal remains from a young age, diving

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Speaker 1: for shark teeth in Florida when he was only ten

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Speaker 1: years old. His parents, however, quickly grew tired of his

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Speaker 1: hobby for one thing. They were running out of room

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Speaker 1: to store it all. They told him that if he

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Speaker 1: wanted to keep anything, he had to start unloading some

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Speaker 1: of his collection. Procopy turned to auction houses and the Internet,

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Speaker 1: where he would sell fossils to the highest bidder. Then

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Speaker 1: he would funnel that money into acquiring and re selling

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Speaker 1: bigger and better items. By two thousand twelve, Procopy had

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Speaker 1: graduated from shark teeth all the way up to dinosaur skeletons.

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Speaker 1: One such item had come into the fossil hunter's hands,

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Speaker 1: and he was looking for a buyer. It was a

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Speaker 1: skeleton belonging to the Tyrannosaurus batar, a relative of the

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Speaker 1: Tyrannosaurus rex that had lived in Mongolia millions of years ago.

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Speaker 1: It was a part of the world that had been

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Speaker 1: a hotbed of paleontological activity since famous scientist Roy Chabin

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Speaker 1: Andrews first discovered fossils in the region during the nineteen twenties.

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Speaker 1: Procopy brought the skeleton from Mongolia into Great Britain before

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Speaker 1: having its shipped to the United States. However, he declared

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Speaker 1: it on US customs forms as having originated in the

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Speaker 1: United Kingdom, not Mongolia. Once it landed in America, it

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Speaker 1: didn't take long for a buyer to emerge, and Procopy

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Speaker 1: set up a sail for the dinosaur's bones in New York.

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Speaker 1: It seemed everything was going fine until Mongolian officials got

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Speaker 1: the word of the impending sail. They stepped in and

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Speaker 1: filed the restraining order, putting a halt to the transaction.

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Speaker 1: According to their records, Procopy had not come to the

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Speaker 1: possession of the Tyrannosaurus skeleton legally. It had been stolen.

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Speaker 1: The constitution of Mongolia stated that any dinosaur fossil found

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Speaker 1: within the country's borders were automatically deemed culturally significant and

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Speaker 1: must be authorized by removal by the governments. Procopy had

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Speaker 1: never sought government approval. Instead, he had just smuggled the skeleton,

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Speaker 1: not of the entreat with the goal of a major payout.

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Speaker 1: Dr Bolarmngin, a Mongolian paleontologist, was the person who had

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Speaker 1: recognized the skeleton as having belonged to her home country

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Speaker 1: and not to the United Kingdom as had been previously stated.

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Speaker 1: Procopy claimed that it was impossible to know where the

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Speaker 1: specimen had come from exactly, as the same species of

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Speaker 1: dinosaur had also been discovered in China. His protests didn't

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Speaker 1: matter in the end, though, and he was arrested in

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Speaker 1: October of two thousand twelve for smuggling the Trantosaurus patar skeleton,

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Speaker 1: as well as two others without prior authorization. Procopy was

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Speaker 1: known to have an eclectic list of clients. These included

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Speaker 1: celebrities and high powered lawyers who paid top dollar for

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Speaker 1: rare fossils, which they would put on display in their

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Speaker 1: homes and businesses. In fact, a Tyrannosaurus batar skull was

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Speaker 1: sold back in two thousand seven to someone who even

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Speaker 1: beat out Leonardo DiCaprio for the privilege of owning it.

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Speaker 1: Though Procopy was not believed to have participated in the sale,

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Speaker 1: the gallery it was purchased from had bought items from

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Speaker 1: him in the past, and the owner of such a

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Speaker 1: special item it was none other than actor Nicolas Cage,

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Speaker 1: who had started to hit films about a famous treasure hunter.

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Speaker 1: He didn't know the skull was stolen at the time.

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Speaker 1: Homeland Security explained the story behind its provenance, and the

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Speaker 1: actor agreed to relinquish it back to Mongolia where it belonged.

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Speaker 1: The skull was so much more than a collector's item

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Speaker 1: or a piece of home decor. It had been an

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Speaker 1: important part of Mongolia's past, and like nicholas Cage to America,

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Speaker 1: it was truly a national treasure. Every living thing has

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Speaker 1: a story to tell us. It's life is comprised of

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Speaker 1: joy and sorrow, success and failure. However, the stories don't

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Speaker 1: end when a thing dies. For one particular creature, there's

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Speaker 1: still quite a lot to say Moby Dick Herman Melville's

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Speaker 1: epic tale of Revenge starts in the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

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Speaker 1: The narrator, Ishmael, goes there to join a whaling vessel

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Speaker 1: seeking adventure. From there, he befriends the South Pacific chieftain,

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Speaker 1: who accompanies him on his journey aboard the Pequad, which

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Speaker 1: is led by the one legged captain Ahab. Melville's novel

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Speaker 1: eventually solidified the author as one of the great American

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Speaker 1: novelists of his day and illustrated New Bedford's importance to

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Speaker 1: the whaling industry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However,

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Speaker 1: the Pennsylvania oil rush of eighteen fifty nine put whaling

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Speaker 1: and New Bedford on notice. Petroleum was now a readily

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Speaker 1: available resource and could be used to heat lamps, make candles,

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Speaker 1: and do everything that whale oil had been doing for

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Speaker 1: hundreds of years. The city pivoted to other industries to

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Speaker 1: stay alive, including manufacturing and fishing, but whaling would still

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Speaker 1: remain an important part of its history, So important, in fact,

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Speaker 1: that in nineteen o three a journalist named Ellis L.

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Speaker 1: Howland proposed a museum to be built to preserve the

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Speaker 1: remains of New Bedford's past. Oil Magnate Henry Huddleson Rodgers agreed,

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Speaker 1: and three years later he donated a bank building for

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Speaker 1: such a purpose. In nineteen oh seven, the New Bedford

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Speaker 1: Whaling Museum opened to the public, and over the next

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Speaker 1: two decades it would grow in both size and number

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Speaker 1: of exhibits on display. Tourists from all over came to visit,

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Speaker 1: especially in nineteen thirty six, when the first of five

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Speaker 1: complete whale skeletons made their debut. They called it Quasimodo,

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Speaker 1: a fitting name for a humpback whale that had died

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Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty two. As time passed and the museum

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Speaker 1: continued to increase its offerings, more skeletons found their way

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Speaker 1: to New Bedford, including a thirty year old sperm whale

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Speaker 1: measuring forty eight feet long, and a forty nine foot

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Speaker 1: whale named Raina, as well as her unborn baby, and

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Speaker 1: the biggest skeleton of the bunch, Cobo. Cobo, or King

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Speaker 1: of the Blue Ocean, was a sixty six ft long

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Speaker 1: blue whale that had been struck by a tanker in

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Speaker 1: Blue whales were already endangered when the accident occurred, with

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Speaker 1: roughly five hundreds still living in the North Atlantic. After

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Speaker 1: it was struck and killed, the whales carcass was studied

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Speaker 1: by various research facilities, with pieces of it being sent

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Speaker 1: all over the globe for examination. As part of Cobo's necropsy,

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Speaker 1: it was discovered that he had been involved in another accident,

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Speaker 1: one that had broken his jaw and left a deep

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Speaker 1: gash in the bone. The skeleton that remained was given

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Speaker 1: to the new Bedford Whaling Museum, which carried out a

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Speaker 1: thorough cleaning process to get it ready for display. Experts

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Speaker 1: separated it and placed the various bone pieces into twenty

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Speaker 1: two separate cages. These cages were then submerged into the

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Speaker 1: harbor to let fish and other creatures nibble away at

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Speaker 1: the remaining flesh. Saving Museum volunteers from the hassle. The

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Speaker 1: cages were then removed from the water five months later,

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Speaker 1: and the skeleton was brought to the museum's courtyard to

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Speaker 1: lay under the cleansing light of the sun. It took

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Speaker 1: a while, but the bones eventually dried out, and Museum

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Speaker 1: of Ashal started assembling the skeleton for display. Unfortunately, they

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Speaker 1: had another problem on their hands, whale oil. Whales had

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Speaker 1: been harvested all those years ago for a reason. They

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Speaker 1: produced a lot of oil, and Cobo was no exception.

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Speaker 1: His bones were so coated in oil they had yellowed

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Speaker 1: and started to smell. To counteract the oil's effects, the

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Speaker 1: skeleton was treated with the solution normally used to cure leather,

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Speaker 1: and it worked. The bones lost both their yellow color

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Speaker 1: and their odor, and were soon hung in the museum's lobby.

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Speaker 1: Cobo now greeted visitors from high above the front doors,

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Speaker 1: but people are worn to keep an eye out because

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Speaker 1: although he's been dead for the last twenty years and

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Speaker 1: is now nothing but a skeleton, Cobo's remains still produce oil,

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Speaker 1: which drips from his bones onto a platform below. Seeing

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Speaker 1: the educational value in the oil, the museum gathers it

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Speaker 1: into a Beaker to teach people about whale oil and

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Speaker 1: its many properties, while Cobo just sort of hangs around.

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Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet

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Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn

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Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.

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Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership

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Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show

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Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,

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Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the

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Speaker 1: World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,