The seller of the unique stone, which is millions of years old and the largest found on earth, is unknown. It is also unclear if any part of the 4.3 million dollars it was sold for will go to Niger, where the nearly 25 kilo large stone was found. How it ended up with the respected auction house is also shrouded in darkness.
Even the government of Niger has expressed "doubts about the legality of the export" and raised concerns about illegal trade, in a statement on X.
According to Sotheby's, the routines were followed when the stone was sold. But Niger has initiated its own investigation into the stone and how it came to be in an American auction house, writes BBC.
Niger has in its statement admitted that there is no specific law regarding meteorites in the country. But the paleontologist Paul Serano, who is a professor at the University of Chicago and founder of the organization Niger Heritage, is convinced that a crime has been committed.
According to international law, you cannot just take something that is important for a country's cultural heritage – whether it is a cultural object, a physical object, a natural object or an extraterrestrial object – out of the country. We have moved on from the colonial era when all this was okay, he says to BBC.
