Biology student discovers triceratops skull, wants to put it on open display

By mbrooks on July 25, 2019
Harrison Duran uncovered the 65 million-year-old skull in the badlands of North Dakota. (CNN)

By Matthew Brooks

A fifth-year biology student recently found a girl named Alice he wants to bring to campus.

There is an age difference between the student and Alice: about 65 million years.

The student, Harrison Duran, was part of a paleontology dig in a remote area of North Dakota.

Duran was with Michael Kjelland on the two-week dig. Kjelland, an experienced excavator, is a biology professor with Mayville State University in North Dakota.

Initially, Duran hoped he would find plant fossils.

Instead, Duran and Kjelland found a triceratops skull.

Duran called the triceratops Alice. Alice is the name of the landowner where the triceratops Duran and Kjelland excavated the triceratops

In a typical case, a rare find such as this ends up in a back room for academic study.

Duran has another idea.

In a university press release, he says he would like to put Alice on open display at the University of California Merced for anyone to view the rare find.

“It would be amazing for UC Merced to be able to display Alice on campus,” Duran said. “It’s such a rare opportunity to showcase something like this, and I’d like to share it with the campus community.”

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