The US government seized a rare dinosaur skeleton on Friday in what an expert called an important step toward returning the bones to their home in Mongolia.

Dallas-based Heritage Auctions sold off the nearly complete Tyrannosaurus bataar in New York on May 20, when an unnamed buyer submitted a winning bid of $1,052,500.

The seizure was ordered by a federal judge in Manhattan earlier this week, and on Friday wooden crates holding pieces of the fossil were loaded onto a truck at a Queens storage center and driven away to a facility whose location was not disclosed.