One Nation, Under God

New display unveiled at GPDM

It's not every day that a new species of dinosaur gets named after you but after a hunting trip in the Missouri Rivers Breaks in the fall of 2010 that's what happened to Dave Bradt a rancher from Florence.

The Great Plains Dinosaur Museum (GPDM) Wine and Dino Event last Friday evening was the site for the unveiling of an exhibit dedicated to the aquatic creature named Nakonanectes bradti, a member of the Plesiosaur species that Bradt discovered while at the Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge.

The unveiling was the main event to an event that hosted over 100 people from all around the country.

"I think the event went well," said Cary Woodruff, GPDM Director of Paleontology said after the event. "It's not just the fact that we had a lot of people. It was people from the community, people from the town, the county, and people from out of state. The people supporting us and that's the most important thing."

Woodruff emceed the event which also featured the story of the creature by Bradt. The display featured a foot long skull an ocean fisherman might see in his nightmares. The display garnered applause across the GPDM as well as a collective "Ooohhh!" after the unveiling.

Bradt was in attendance with his wife Jolene and sons Garrison and Kellen. The GPDM had even drew comparisons to another dinosaur museum that is currently the home of the real Nakonanectes bradti skull.

"It was great," Bradt said. "This was more than we could have (anticipated). (My) kids were all excited, lots of people came and this whole museum is fascinating, I had no idea. We've been to the Museum of the Rockies and this is right in the same trip. It's amazing!"

For Bradt, finding the 18-foot skeleton wasn't the first time that he had seen fossils in the area but nothing of this magnitude.

"We've found a few of these ammonites (over the years) and you just keep seeing these fossiled bits and pieces," Bradt said.

Bradt was exhausted after following an elk that he had been bow-hunting, when he found another fossil but it was not like anything he had seen before.

"I followed an elk up at the middle of the day, you can't chase them anymore, it was hot and I was trying to beat the heat," Bradt said. "So I get in the coulee and I'm washing my face off just like my dad did when I was a boy because it cools you off and I see the ribs coming straight at me and I thought that they were petrified sticks."

He then realized that what he found was a ribcage about the size of a bovine.

"I pulled back the brush and saw the longneck but the head was in the bank," Bradt said.

Bradt then went to the refuge office and reported the GPS location of the fossil. The information traveled and eventually Bradt and his family were invited to attend the dig by paleontologist Dr. Patrick Druckenmiller, who was heading up the excavation.

"So we spent three days digging," Bradt said. "It was my son Kellen's birthday and so we had a cake going in the dutch oven and they got to talk to those guys while digging."

After six years of studying the find, paleontologists found that the pre-historic Phillips County Loch Ness-like creature was indeed a new species and had named the specimen after the family. Its binomial nomenclature broken down is Nakonanectes which derived from the Nakoda or Nakona Assiniboine people and bradti being derived from Bradt's last name.

After last Friday's event the Bradt family headed out for a Father's Day weekend camping trip.

"I want to see some more," Bradt said.

 

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