Originally published March 2023 · Updated August 2026
Have you ever wondered how a dinosaur skeleton ends up in a museum or public exhibition? Who discovers and digs up the bones? How are the bones stabilized and prepared? And what process is used to restore the missing parts and, eventually, assemble the finished specimen?
Read on to find out more about Willard—an astounding fossilized Triceratops prorsus skeleton unearthed in the badlands of North Dakota and one of the largest known examples of the species.
We had the pleasure of getting to know the team behind the discovery of Willard—Alan Komrosky and Monte Bader—as well as the head palaeo-preparator of the skeleton, Nils Knötschke. Knötschke’s team, based in Europe, prepared Willard for a major dinosaur exhibit at the Hong Kong Science Museum. The fossil preparation took place in Switzerland, and Willard’s completed skeleton was mounted in Italy by Bat-Tech—incredibly challenging tasks. Willard’s journey is filled with excitement and surprises. It is also an example of the valuable collaboration that often occurs among commercial fossil hunters, dealers and brokers, preparators and the museum community.
Part IThe Discovery
Many fossils, including dinosaur skeletons, are found by professional fossil hunters. Like their academic counterparts, they share a passion for palaeontology and geology and often employ many of the same techniques in the field and the laboratory. Discovering a dinosaur skeleton is a major project that involves skill, experience, unwavering persistence…and a dash of luck. The discovery and excavation of Willard was no exception.
It all started when Alan Komrosky, a seasoned “bone digger” with a knack for unearthing impressive dinosaurs, teamed up with Monte Bader, a local with years of experience negotiating land leases and contracts. Komrosky had dug these lands since the 1990s with great success, and the ranch he had in mind to explore had been home to outstanding finds in the not-too-distant past, including two raptor skeletons. It was located near the town of Rhame in Bowman County, North Dakota.
Geologically, this area is part of the Hell Creek Formation, a celebrated source of Late Cretaceous dinosaur discoveries dating from approximately 68 to 66 million years ago. The promising dig site lay amid the Cedar Buttes and Cedar Valley ranches, a desolate and beautiful landscape of gaping canyons and towering buttes along the Little Missouri River.
It was not an easy project by any stretch of the imagination. The dig site yielded few fossils of significance for nearly two full digging seasons. But there was no lack of hard work from the team members, who included young Everett and Emmerie Komrosky. On a fateful day toward the end of season two, Everett chanced upon a large, sun-bleached vertebra near the ranch house—an unexpected place to find a bone. Homing in on this spot led to the discovery of a complete rib, setting the stage for a wildly productive third season in which the rest of the enormous skeleton was uncovered throughout the dig site.
It was a truly unprecedented find and a significant achievement. The nasal horn and femur were undeniably gigantic—larger by far than anything Komrosky had seen before. Based on the femur and pelvic bone length, he estimated that Willard would stand two feet higher at the hip than his closest rivals. Major dinosaur skeletons often receive a name, and this one-of-a-kind Triceratops was affectionately called “Willard” in honour of the former landowner.
In the end, Komrosky was “extremely blessed to have played a role in bringing something as grand as Willard to the world…we hope to have more spectacular finds to share with the world in the future!”
Part IIThe Preparation and Assembly
After Willard’s discovery, Komrosky got in touch with Peter Lovisek, founder of Fossil Realm. Fossil Realm was engaged to broker the original fossil material before preparation and mounting, with the hope of finding a buyer, such as a museum or academic institution, that could place Willard on public display. After several months promoting this important skeleton online, Lovisek was contacted by German dinosaur palaeontologist Nils Knötschke.
It soon became apparent that Willard, which spans approximately 28 feet long and 11.8 feet high, was a strong fit for The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: The Big Eight – Dinosaur Revelation, presented at the Hong Kong Science Museum from July 8, 2022, to February 22, 2023.
Knötschke and his team decided to take on the monumental project of preparing, restoring, assembling and mounting Willard—an especially challenging set of tasks considering that they were working to a strict timeline.
We were keen to learn more about the process, and Knötschke was happy to share his crew’s experience with Willard. The following is an excerpt from an interview with Knötschke, conducted by Peter Lovisek.
Peter Lovisek: What were your first thoughts about Willard’s bones, based on the unprepared images you saw? What stood out the most to you, and what convinced you that the skeleton was right for the exhibit?
Nils Knötschke: We spent a long time looking for a Triceratops for a skeleton montage. It was important for us to have very good documentation of the bones in the field, during the excavation, and a quarry map. Many of the Triceratops skeletons that were available for selection did not meet these criteria. With Willard we were very lucky.
Some of the Triceratops skeletons we looked at were surface-collected bones from different animals put together to form one skeleton—definitely not what we were looking for.
The bones of Willard the Triceratops belong to one animal and they were still mostly unprepared—this was also extremely important to us. After the special exhibition at the Hong Kong Science Museum in 2022, Willard will be a new highlight at the Sauriermuseum Aathal in Seegräben, Switzerland, and it is incredibly important to the team that the dinosaur finds on display are properly documented. This is one of the basic requirements, because only good documentation from the excavation to the preparation to the finished skeleton makes a formal scientific treatment of the dinosaur possible.
What also convinced us was the communication with Fossil Realm and the discoverers of the dinosaur. All details concerning the find situation were communicated to us directly.
Present location: Following the Hong Kong exhibition, Willard was installed at Sauriermuseum Aathal, where it is now exhibited.
PL: What did you notice after seeing the bones in person?
NK: We saw that we [had] a lot of work ahead of us. Joking aside, the skeleton was mostly well- to very well-preserved. But difficult [to prepare] bones lay before us—that is normal with a dinosaur discovery! The coordination of the team was important. We had only 3 months to prepare more than 40 original bones. Four preparators worked continuously on the project and four preparators [worked as part of] an additional team from time to time.
PL: Can you briefly explain the main steps required to prepare and restore the specimen?
NK: The preparation was very time-consuming but also worthwhile! Our team first cleaned and further exposed all the bones in the plaster jackets from one side. This is mainly done with fine air scribes. With the vibrating needles, we blasted off the surrounding encasing rock from the bone surface. There is—mostly—a natural separation between rock and bone.
This means exposing bone centimetre by centimetre and hardening or bonding it with superglue and depth primer. The separation varied from good to non-existent, but we also removed the stubborn rock residues from the bone surface with a sand blaster.
PL: What were the primary challenges you faced and how did you overcome them?
NK: The biggest challenge was time. Fortunately, we found Willard in time and the logistics also went smoothly. The Triceratops still had to be transported from America to Switzerland. At the end of November 2021 our “little” dinosaur arrived at the Aathal Museum—I still remember how excited we all were to finally see him live.
From January 3, 2022 we started with the preparation. That was a very intensive time. Until April, we prepared the Triceratops bones almost nonstop—from 8:00 in the morning until the early hours of the next day!
We knew we had to be ready by the beginning of April 2022—otherwise the timing with the skeleton assembly and mounting would no longer [work]. So one night shift followed the next. That’s how it is in palaeontology.
But we had a lot of fun as well. Triceratops is one of the most iconic dinosaurs ever—and we might never prepare a second one! The whole team carried the “Willard spirit”—some of us interrupted their studies for two weeks just to work on the Triceratops.
From the preparation side, very hard clay-ironstone concretions were the proverbial “hardest” nuts we had to crack. Super-hard rock that encloses the bone...
In the end, beautiful bones always motivated us to keep going. And also surprising discoveries like the right lower jaw that first appeared during the preparation in the laboratory and the many T. rex bite marks on the bones of Willard—I think these highlights motivated our team.
PL: How difficult is it to mount a specimen as large and robust as Willard?
NK: Very difficult—the bones of this very large and old Triceratops are [extremely] heavy. So heavy that we always needed help with the preparation to turn the bones over…three people had to move the femur or the pelvic bones.
It takes a lot of anatomical knowledge and engineering skills to assemble the original bones. Everything has to be fixed individually in steel clamps, and the skeleton has to look good in the end.
PL: Why was Willard such a good fit for this exhibition?
NK: With Willard, the exhibition features one of the biggest Triceratops prorsus skeletons ever discovered and known to science. So that was one of the main reasons for us to choose Willard—a Triceratops skeleton well-documented and from a trustworthy source, [this way] nothing stands in the way of scientific research and exhibition quality.
Willard was one of the stars of The Big Eight, which also showcased seven other outstanding skeletons: Tyrannosaurus, Spinosaurus, Allosaurus, Hesperosaurus, Diplodocus, Hatzegopteryx and a juvenile sauropod. The exhibition attracted more than 890,000 visitors to the Hong Kong Science Museum.
Following the exhibition, Willard was installed at Sauriermuseum Aathal in Switzerland, where it is now exhibited.
Comments
Omar Abel Staltari said:
Excellent publication, with the information on Willard’s discovery and the professional treatment for its restoration and adequate preparation for the exhibition at the Museum
lil elk said:
I love this article
\
Sinsirly everett komrosky
Beth Mackay said:
This is a most interesting article. My 3 year old grandson is really into dinosaurs right now and I am anxious to share this with him!