Someone pulled off what is arguably the most Montana prank of the summer over the weekend, hauling a nearly 300-pound Sinclair dinosaur out of a Gardiner gas station parking lot Sunday evening and bolting it to a cliff face in Yankee Jim Canyon, roughly 10 miles away near the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park. Drivers spotted the bright green brontosaurus on the rock wall the next morning and word got out fast.
Employees from the gas station recovered the fiberglass dinosaur Monday and returned it with what the station described as minimal damage. The Sinclair dinosaur — a fixture at stations belonging to the oil company that has used the brontosaurus as its logo for decades — is the kind of roadside landmark that regulars don't notice until it's gone, and then miss immediately.
Yankee Jim Canyon is a narrow stretch of the Yellowstone River corridor where the road squeezes between cliff walls on the way to Gardiner, and the image of a Sinclair dino bolted to the rock face there has circulated widely on social media. Whoever did it apparently came prepared: bolting a 300-pound object to a canyon wall in the dark is not an impulsive act.
No arrests had been reported as of Monday. The dinosaur is back at the station.