New York: The United States has returned to Mongolia more than 18 dinosaur skeletons and fossils stolen from the Gobi desert and smuggled abroad, saying they were enough to stock a museum.

The haul includes skeletons of two Tyrannosaurus bataars, a cousin of the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex, and two Oviraptors, known at least apocryphally for eating other dinosaur eggs.

Two Gallimimus dinosaur skeletons on display during a repatriation ceremony at the US Attorney's Office in New York. Credit:Reuters/Eduardo Munoz

The repatriation ceremony was the culmination of a two-year effort to return numerous dinosaur fossils smuggled to the US and other countries.

Some were illegally smuggled into the US using false customs papers and others were voluntarily forfeited by a British collector to the US for return to Mongolia.