The United States has handed back 64 cultural relics and paleontological fossils to China, the National Cultural Heritage Administration confirmed.

They were transferred in two batches in Washington and New York on Wednesday and Friday, Beijing Time, by Homeland Security Investigations and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

Among the items, seized by US law enforcement, are the torso of a bodhisattva statue from the Tianlongshan Grottoes, along with other statues and terracotta figures, as well as fossils of dinosaur skeletons, dinosaur eggs and fish.

The repatriation is part of China-US cooperation against illicit trafficking of Chinese cultural property under a memorandum of understanding signed in 2009 and renewed three times since.