3,000-pound skull uncovered by Missouri students after rancher stumbles upon mystery

You never know what you can find right under your feet.

A rancher discovered something unusual sticking out of the ground while repairing a fence last summer. Now researchers unearthed a 3,000-pound triceratops skull, experts said.

A group of researchers from Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, excavated a 7-foot-long, 1.5-ton triceratops skull from the Badlands in South Dakota, according to a news release from the college.

“It was so exciting … we just didn’t believe it,” said David Schmidt, an associate professor of geology and environmental science who led the group excavation this summer. “Now we’re just living the dream out.”

Three Westminster students and four alumni joined Schmidt for a fossil expedition at the Grand River National Grassland, according to the college.

“During their field research, the Westminster group usually expects to find fragments of dinosaur bone and the occasional isolated, complete bone,” Westminster College said in last week’s news release. “But everything changed when a rancher discovered something unusual poking out of the earth along a slope as he repaired a fence in the summer of 2019.”

The rancher told the National Forest Service what he had found, and the research group got permission to excavate the area.

The piece that was sticking out was the tip of a triceratops horn, and it took months to carefully excavate, Schmidt said in the news release.

“Digging up the 3,000-pound triceratops skull — named ‘Shady’ by students after community members of the nearby town of Shadehill, SD — made the student and alumni group giddy, begging to remain in the field this summer longer than the usual six to seven hours per day,” the news release said.

Using pickaxes, shovels, a telehandler, backhoe and a flatbed truck, Shady the triceratops skull was unearthed and brought back to Westminster’s campus, according to the college.

“The first order of business will be to enlarge the entrance to the Environmental Science laboratory in Coulter Science Center for Shady’s makeover,” Westminster College said. “Other bones that remain in the South Dakota dirt will be dug up next summer.”

This story was originally published August 24, 2020 at 1:47 PM with the headline "3,000-pound skull uncovered by Missouri students after rancher stumbles upon mystery."