GPDM unveils new display at 'Wine and Dino' event

Last Friday night at the Great Plains Dinosaur Museum in Malta, first-year curator Cary Woodruff welcomed a crowd of nearly 150 to the facility for the Annual Wine and Dino event in conjunction with the Phillips County Museum.

The day included food, beverages, free admission to both museums, a train ride for children and the opening of the GPDM newest display.

"An important thing tonight is not just about seeing new information," Woodruff said. "Just because paleontologists are studying something from long ago does not mean by any stretch that once we do one bit of research that is all we can ever glean and learn from the fossil. We will always be learning ...a fossil is an endless book, it will always be telling a story."

Woodruff said the new display features a fossil not new to the GPDM, but one that focuses on new research and components.

Phillips County Commissioner Lesley Robinson and Malta Mayor Shyla Jones were both at the event Friday to help Woodruff unveil the new display, both pulling a cord that dropped the curtain to the exhibit. The nearly 150 people in attendance stood elbow to elbow awaiting the unveiling and when the curtain dropped, "oohs and ahhs" were followed by a round of applause.

The new GPDM display features portions of a Stegosaurs which was originally found by Rick and Linda Yurek of Stockett, Mont. – a town 20 miles south of Great Falls. The Yureks were in attendance for the unveiling and were excited about the new display and were happy to donate the fossils they found to the museum.

"We are from a small community and we wanted it to be on display, so people could see it, instead of on a shelf somewhere in a bigger museum and we figured this would be a good place," Rick said.

Rick said he and his son found the Stegosaurs bones in their backyard, by mistake, while attempting to put in a retaining wall in 1997. He said his son walked up to a bank and pulled out a leg bone (which was confirmed by staff members of the Museum of the Rockies.)

"They said we wouldn't find any more," Rick recalled, "But my wife went out there and kept on digging anyway and she kept finding a little bit more and a little bit more."

Rick said that while Linda was digging in her backyard she was documenting each find until one day, in a pile of bones, she found the dinosaur's skull. She said even though professionals told the family they wouldn't find any more bones that she continued to dig because "that is just me."

"I knew it was something big and I told (Rick) that he couldn't put the retaining wall up," Linda said. "I would go out there with my puppy and dig and the pile just kept getting bigger."

Linda's digging lasted two years before paleontologists came back to the Yurick's back yard to start a dig of their own. Linda said she enjoyed the digging, but it didn't come with out a price.

"I broke every garden tool in our shed," she said. "Every garden tool, spoons, hoes, shovels, you name it. Finally, that last year, we bought an air-chisel so that was a little bit better. It was an adventure."

Linda, like Rick, is happy the GDPM is able to display the fossils she spent so long unearthing.

"This is just the greatest place and the people here are so nice and so dedicated to what they are doing," she said. "If I lived here, I would be at this museum all the time."