Forget buffalo – a new horned resident has stomped onto the University of Colorado Boulder campus. A magnificent Triceratops skeleton cast now greets visitors in the Sustainable, Energy and Environment Community (SEEC) building, its impressive silhouette a testament to ancient giants.
This life-size replica, a gift from the Smithsonian Institution, wasn’t born from a single creature. Instead, it’s a Frankenstein’s monster of the prehistoric world, pieced together from ten partial Triceratops unearthed in Wyoming over a century ago. Scientists at the Smithsonian meticulously assembled these fossils for a 1905 exhibit, and now, a high-resolution cast of that masterpiece graces Boulder.
While CU previously hosted a Triceratops skull for over four decades (loaned by the Smithsonian, mind you), this is their first full-scale dinosaur skeleton. Talk about an upgrade! Getting this behemoth to its new home was no easy feat. Imagine rolling a 22-foot-long, 9-foot-tall monster through doorways – the Triceratops had to be disassembled, transported in pieces, and meticulously reassembled off-site before taking its rightful place in the SEEC lobby.
“Everybody knows about Triceratops,” said Karen Chin, professor in the Department of Geological sciences and curator of paleontology at the CU Museum of Natural History. “But it’s not common in museums to see the whole animal. To see the scale of this dinosaur, and such a weird dinosaur, is very exciting.”
According to Devner 7, “students, staff and the public can see the exhibit for free on weekdays between 7:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. The Sustainable, Energy and Environment Community building is on East Campus and is closed on weekends and holidays.”
