A green Sinclair gas station dinosaur statue swiped from its San Joaquin County post has been found and returned, after deputies tracked it to Stockton and discovered it stashed with a bag pulled over its head. The twist: whoever had it last apparently thought they had scored a legitimate piece of prehistoric history.
The San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office said the theft was reported on Oct. 27, according to KCRA. Deputies eventually located the alleged thief, but by then the statue had already changed hands, sold off to a purchaser who had no idea the dinosaur was stolen property.
That purchaser, per the sheriff's office, apparently believed he had stumbled upon a genuine piece of history. Investigators traced the statue to Stockton, where they found it with a bag covering its green head, an odd detail that made the sheriff's office's own recap of the recovery almost as memorable as the theft itself.
A Deputy Takes the Dinosaur for a Ride
Once the statue was recovered, the sheriff's office documented its trip home in a way few police reports ever do. The agency posted a photo showing a deputy riding the dinosaur as it was hauled back to the gas station where it belongs, a lighthearted coda to an otherwise straightforward theft case.
It is not the first time a Sinclair dinosaur has gone missing from its post and turned into a local spectacle. In Montana, a nearly 300-pound Sinclair dinosaur was stolen from a Gardiner gas station one evening and turned up the next day bolted to a cliff face nearly 10 miles away in Yankee Jim Canyon, according to KTVQ. That dinosaur was recovered by employees and returned to the station with minimal damage. The same report noted a Sinclair dinosaur had previously been hauled up to the “M” overlooking Bozeman, and that a Billings dinosaur was stolen multiple times in 2022 before ultimately being vandalized.
A Pattern of Dino-Nappings Across the West
California has seen its own run of Sinclair statue disappearances. An 8-foot Sinclair “DINO” statue was returned to its gas station in southwest Bakersfield following a Kern County District Attorney's Office operation tied to gas-station thefts, as reported by BakersfieldNow. More recently, a 50-pound fiberglass dinosaur named Claire was stolen from a Los Angeles Sinclair station and later returned along with an apologetic note, according to NBC News.
Not every dinosaur gets a happy ending, though. In El Sobrante, a Sinclair dinosaur stolen in August 2018 still had not been recovered by the time the East Bay Times reported on it that December, with police believing it had been dropped off at an apartment complex on the 4500 block of Appian Way. And in New Mexico, the San Juan County Sheriff's Office said a Sinclair dinosaur went missing from a station in Nageezi and was only recovered after investigators received a tip pointing them to where the statue had ended up, per KRQE.
For now, San Joaquin County's dinosaur is back where it started, hood removed and presumably back to greeting drivers at the pump. Whether the alleged thief or the unsuspecting buyer face any further consequences has not been detailed by the sheriff's office.
