Rare juvenile T. rex fossil found by children in North Dakota to go on display in Denver museum

A rare juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex fossil found by three children during a family hike in the North Dakota Badlands will soon be on display at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, the museum said Tuesday.

The unlikely discovery was made in July 2022 by brothers Jessin and Liam Fisher, their father Sam Fisher, and their cousin, Kaiden Madsen. Unsure of what his family had just stumbled upon, Sam reached out to an old high school friend, paleontologist Tyler Lyson, for help.

After obtaining an excavation permit from the Bureau of Land Management — which manages the land where the discovery was made — Lyson, the museum's curator of paleontology, went out to North Dakota in 2023 with a crew and the children to excavate the fossil.