Rare triceratops skull unveiled at the Royal Tyrrell Museum

Lovers of paleontology are in for a treat as the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology unveiled a massive triceratops skull on Oct. 5.

Lovers of paleontology are in for a treat as the Royal Tyrrell Museum unveiled a massive triceratops skull that was collected by the museum’s technicians in 2015.

On Thursday, a preserved triceratops skull will be on display for the first time as part of the museum’s new Fossils in Focus exhibit.

The Ceratopsians are a group of beaked plant-eating dinosaurs that roamed the earth during the Cretaceous period. According to the Royal Tyrrell Museum, triceratops fossils are quite uncommon in Canada. This specimen was collected in the southwestern Alberta foothills. It was found along Callum Creek, a tributary of the Oldman River, about two hours south of Calgary.

The dinosaur lived between 69 and 68 million years ago and its skull measures more than six feet from the tip of the beak to the top of the frill. The frill (the bony shield on the back of the skull) alone is more than five feet wide.

The museum says this dinosaur was not fully mature, and it likely would have grown to a larger size if it had lived longer. The tips of the brow horns eroded away shortly after it died.

Museum technicians encountered this triceratops specimen in 2014 when they were conducting flood mitigation paleontology work after heavy flooding in southern Alberta in 2013. They gathered the skull and most of the lower jaws over the span of a month in the fall of 2015. The material was extracted in blocks and a helicopter was needed to transport it from the site. The remainder of the skeleton was not located.

“Technician Ian Macdonald started work to prepare this spectacular specimen for research and display in 2016. Over the course of seven years, and 6,500+ hours of work, he removed more than 815 kilograms of hard rock to expose the skull.  Ian finished preparing the specimen in spring 2023. Its nickname, ‘Calli,’ is a reference to Callum Creek, where the skull was found,” the Royal Tyrrell Museum said in a statement Thursday.

The skull is attached to a steel stand designed by artists Lynn Gratz, Sandra Dunn, Bronson Kodos and Aimie Botelho in a shop in Strathmore, Alta., just an hour away from the museum. The elaborate frame they designed gives visitors a 360 view of the triceratops skull.