Deputies Found a Stolen Gas Station Dinosaur With a Bag Over Its Head, Then One Rode It Home

STOCKTON, Calif., Nov. 10, 2026 — The dinosaur was found in Stockton with a bag over its head. Its captors, it turns out, had moved it on.

The large green statue, the kind that has stood outside Sinclair gas stations for decades, was reported stolen from a station in San Joaquin County on Oct. 27, the sheriff's office said. Deputies on the department's B-Side patrol shift identified a suspect and arrested him, CBS Sacramento reported. By then the dinosaur was already gone.

It had been sold, the sheriff's office said in a Facebook post, to an "unsuspecting purchaser who apparently believed he had stumbled upon a genuine piece of history in the present day," KCRA reported. Deputies followed the leads to Stockton, where the statue was waiting with a bag pulled over its green head.

A deputy took the bag off. Then, with help from the sheriff's STARS volunteers, the dinosaur went back to the gas station, and the deputy rode on top of it for the trip. The sheriff's office posted the photo and described the pair as having formed a "prehistoric friendship."

The department did not hold back on the puns. "Thanks to the stellar investigative work of our B-Side patrol deputies, this theft of a prehistoric creature did not become unsolved history," it said. "Another case has officially gone extinct."

The sheriff's office did not name the suspect or say what charges he faces, and it did not say which station the statue came from. It did offer the public one piece of advice. "You never know what you might come across in this wonderful county," deputies said. "As always, if you see something, say something. Even if it's a dinosaur!"