‘I’m still kind of mind-blown’: Man finds 90-million-year-old fossil during fishing tournament

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT/Gray News) - A Nebraska man made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery in the Missouri River: a fossil of what appears to be a 90-million-year-old fish.

Fishing is more than a sport for Andy Moore.

“It’s the feeling you get when that fish bites your line,” Moore said. “It’s that primordial jolt you get in your spine, and it goes right to your brain.”

Moore got a jolt like no other from his catch at a tournament in mid-August. He was fishing just west of Yankton, South Dakota, located about 160 miles northwest of Omaha.

At first, Moore wasn’t doing very well in the tournament.

“I pitched my jig, and it’s horrible,” he said. “It’s, like, way left, and I’m like ‘Oh, man.’”

Moore had snagged the back of a rock and couldn’t get it off his line. So, he paddled his kayak up to the rock.

“I get up to it, and I’m like, ‘Oh wow! That’s kind of cool.’ I thought it was a big catfish skeleton or a deer skeleton,” he said. “Something told me to take a picture of this.”

Moore later posted the pictures online. Within minutes, texts and phone calls started flooding in.

“It was like, ‘Uh, dude. Did you know that’s a 90-million-year-old fossil that’s in that picture?’ I’m like, ‘What?’” he said.

Moore then contacted a biologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He and the biologist went back out and found the rock, using the coordinates from pictures on Moore’s cell phone.

“The geologist guy saw it, and ... he just jumped out of the boat in his boots, goes up to it, and he goes, ‘Oh my god,’” Moore said.

The biologist confirmed with WOWT that the fossil does appear to be that of a prehistoric predator fish that’s up to 90 million years old.

“I’m still kind of mind-blown about the whole thing,” Moore said.

As for the tournament, Moore said he didn’t do very well but that this time he doesn’t mind, “because I have the discovery of a lifetime.”

The fossil will be on display at the Lewis and Clark Visitor’s Center, on the Nebraska side.

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