Big John - Zoic

Big John

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Zoic Projects

Big John

An iconic dinosaur in the collective imagination, Big John is the largest triceratops discovered and documented to date.

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Zoic Projects

Discovered in May 2014 by geologist Walter W. Stein Bill in Perkins County,
South Dakota, this skeleton was unearthed through an extensive excavation campaign.

Some Data:
Period: Cretaceous (66 million years ago)
Family: Ceratopsidae
Skeleton Length: 8 meters
Width: 2 meters
Height: 3 meters
The Skull: 2.67 meters in length and 2 meters in width, represents a true marvel of bioengineering with over 66 million years of life.

The raw bones of Big John, still in their extraction jackets, arrived at our laboratory at the end of 2020. After months of meticulous work, each bone was carefully removed from the rock, cleaned, restored, and cataloged. After hundreds of hours of labor, our team managed to reconstruct the missing parts and mount it on a customized support, making it visible in all its grandeur and splendor.

Big John was not just a sale but a thoroughly studied and elaborated project.
During the process, despite the COVID-19 period, we opened our laboratory to the public, allowing everyone to see and understand how our work is carried out.
Once completed, Big John was the star of a unique exhibition in Trieste.
For three days, Piazza Unità d’Italia hosted the complete skeleton of this enormous triceratops. This project was realized thanks to collaboration with the Municipality of Trieste. By working closely together, we created an exceptional event.
Our goal has always been to explain, discuss, and share with the public what we do, making paleontology easy to understand, and our visits were always free.
Not only outreach but also science, Big John was studied by the University of Chieti and the University of Bologna, and the research results were published in the scientific journal Scientific Reports. (Article available here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-08033-2)

Big John garnered enormous media attention, with global coverage, achieving the Guinness World Record as the largest triceratops skeleton ever studied.
In October 2021, an American philanthropist purchased it at auction (Auction Link), and after a few months, it was displayed at the Glazer Children’s Museum in Tampa, where it remains visible to both adults and children (https://www.bigjohndino.com/ ).

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