Four suspects have been arrested by Chinese law enforcement authorities over the theft of 80 fossilized dinosaur eggs, Chinese state media reported on Monday.
Police have recovered 27 of the 80 dinosaur eggs, which have been stolen from a dinosaur egg collector in eastern Zhejiang Province during the night of Jan. 9, according to the state-owned Xinhua News Agency.
One of the suspects, known only by his surname Wang, was alleged to have visited the collector two times while pretending to be a potential buyer of the fossilized eggs.
The band divided the stolen eggs among them, with Wang taking 27 eggs to his home in northeastern China's Heilongjiang Province where they were recovered by the police with the help of the man's relatives, the report said.
All four suspects are now in custody, with the remaining 53 eggs still unaccounted for.
The investigation remains ongoing, according to state media.
China is one of the main sources of fossils for collectors, and the country has some of the biggest dinosaur fossil collections in the world.
The southern Chinese city of Heyuan is especially recognized for its vast repository of fossilized eggs of prehistoric reptiles.
More than 13,000 eggs have been discovered in the city since 1996, when a group of schoolchildren stumbled across dinosaur fossils while playing on a construction site.
In April 2015, construction workers there have unearthed a nest of 43 dinosaur eggs, 19 of which were in intact condition, while conducting road maintenance in the city streets.
In 2005, Heyuan's museum was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for having the largest collection of dinosaur egg fossils in the world.
A large portion of the fossils discovered in China and neighboring Mongolia are smuggled to other countries, where they are purchased or auctioned off in the black markets at prices reaching as high as $1 million.