Davenport’s Putnam Museum Will Get Triceratops Dinosaur Skeleton
It’s taken 66 million years (or really, since 1867), but the Putnam Museum and Science Center in Davenport expects to be the first Iowa museum to display a complete dinosaur skeleton in 2027.
During the Putnam’s recent annual Dino Days event, president/CEO Cindy Diehl Yang announced the ambitious plan to bring an adult Triceratops skeleton to the museum (1717 W. 12th St., Davenport) for the benefit of the greater Quad-City community.
“This project feels like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the museum,” she said. “As I’m relatively new to the Quad Cities, it’s an honor to be a small part of bringing something this epic to this amazing community. This will be the community’s dinosaur, and we will need everyone’s support to bring the dino home!”
Yang became the Putnam chief executive in July 2024, and preparations for the Triceratops dig and transfer began before her tenure. Kelly Lao, the Putnam’s vice president for museum experiences, discussed the potential in 2023 with Marcus Eriksen, who brought his “JUNKraft” exhibit to the Davenport museum in May of that year.
An example of the Triceratops skeleton that will be excavated and installed at the Putnam by 2027.
Eriksen and a colleague in 2008 launched a homemade raft from Los Angeles to Hawaii to bring attention to the emerging plastic pollution problem. With no motor or support vessel, they took 13 weeks to reach their destination and the raft (made from 15,000 plastic bottles, 26 sailboat masts, and an aircraft fuselage) was later displayed at the Putnam.
Eriksen told Lao about the organization he heads, Leap Lab, which has been doing dinosaur excavations in Wyoming for three decades. He said his crews had discovered four separate Triceratops skeletons, and Lao attended one dig site there last summer.
The Triceratops lived during the late Maastrichtian age of the late Cretaceous period, about 68 to 66 million years ago on the island continent of Laramidia, now forming western North America. It was one of the last-known non-avian dinosaurs and lived until the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago. The name Triceratops means “three-horned face.”
The skeleton earmarked for the Putnam is currently being excavated at a dig site in remote Lusk, Wyoming. A team of 10 from the Putnam Museum and the greater community are expected to leave on Sunday, June 22nd to join the dig and begin the process of bringing the findings back to the Quad Cities.
When Lao visited last year, Eriksen agreed to host the dig expedition, assist with bone prep and fabricate any missing pieces that are not found when unearthing the skeleton, Yang said.
Kelly Lao
“The Putnam is thrilled to partner with Leap Lab to bring a triceratops to the Quad Cities,” Lao said. “This collaboration combines cutting-edge science with immersive education, inspiring curiosity and wonder in our community. It’s not just about showcasing a dinosaur; it’s about sparking the imagination of future explorers, scientists, and lifelong learners.”
The Triceratops fossils will make the Putnam Museum and Science Center the only place in Iowa where visitors can see a full dinosaur skeleton. The museum expects the skeleton to be installed in 2027 (first in the Palmer traveling exhibit gallery) and be a permanent addition to the museum’s over 250,000-item collection.
A true QC partnership
Since this is literally a massive undertaking, the Putnam is partnering with several local organizations to turn the dream into reality.
They include Augustana College and the Fryxell Geology Museum, VictoryXR, the Quad City Symphony Orchestra, Leap Lab: Ventura County Science Center, Eastern Wyoming Nature Center and local “Jurassic Park” aficionado Colin Parry.
The Putnam will also have opportunities for community members to contribute to the $320,000 “Bring the Dinosaur Home to the Quad Cities” project through in person donations at the museum and online.
The group of local people going on the week-long trip for the Wyoming dig site include QCSO conductor Mark Russell Smith and his wife; Kelli and Steve Grubbs of Victory Enterprises (who will film there for a future exhibit), and four Putnam staffers, including curator and paleontologist Chris Chandler.
Cindy Diehl Yang has been the president and CEO of Davenport’s Putnam Museum & Science Center since July 2024.
The QCSO is involved based on a conversation this past winter between executive director Brian Baxter and Yang, the Putnam president. He had asked if the Putnam wanted to partner in the orchestra’s next movie presentation at the Adler Theatre, which will be the classic “Jurassic Park,” to be shown with live John Williams music on Oct. 25, 2025.
“I laughed, saying ‘Funny you should say that, we are trying to get all our Is dotted and Ts crossed on actually bringing a dinosaur to the community’,” Yang recalled Wednesday, “Would you be willing to bring this as a much bigger partnership? It just lined itself so nicely, from the very first conversation, to build out on that.”
The Putnam will promote the Dino project both at the “Jurassic Park” showing and this Aug. 16th’s annual Riverfront Pops at LeClaire Park, which features music of Chicago and other ‘70s horn bands.
The fundraising goal of $320,000 by 2027 is for everything, Yang said, including the dig excavations, the preparation of bones, likely creation of synthetic bones to complete the skeleton, as well as exhibit installation and marketing.
“We have the horn and part of the skull; we may end up piecing together two dinosaurs from there, to have enough bones comfortable in saying we have a dinosaur,” she said. “I was surprised when I talked to Marcus, many of the dinosaurs displayed are not complete skeletons. Sue at the (Chicago) Field Museum is 90 percent dinosaur. I did not know that.”
What’s in a name?
Perhaps the world’s best-known dinosaur skeleton is Sue, at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
The massive T. rex predator (whose sex is unknown) is named for Sue Hendrickson, who discovered the dinosaur in 1990 during a commercial excavation trip north of Faith, S.D., according to the Field website.
Hendrickson spotted a few large vertebrae jutting out of an eroded bluff and followed her hunch that there were more beneath the surface. In the end, it took six people 17 days to extract the dinosaur’s bones from the ground where Sue was discovered.
After Hendrickson’s landmark discovery, three parties embarked on a five-year custody battle that ended in a public auction in 1997, the site says. The highest bidder was The Field Museum (with support from McDonald’s Corporation, Walt Disney World Resort, and private donors), at a staggering $8.4 million—the most money ever paid for a fossil at auction.
Sue finally made a dramatic debut in Stanley Field Hall on May 17, 2000, but there was a lot of work to be done to get the skeleton there. After Sue was bought, 12 museum preparators spent more than 30,000 hours preparing the skeleton (plus another 20,000 hours building the exhibit).
The 66-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton Sue has been at Chicago’s Field Museum for 25 years.
Yang said she’s not sure where the Putnam Triceratops will end up permanently, which will be based on how large the skeleton will be.
She is sure there will be a naming contest for the Putnam treasure, with a public vote on submitted nominees.
“I think the whole concept of how large and just unreal dinosaurs seem to us now makes it so exciting,” Yang said, noting many first-time Putnam visitors ask if they have a dinosaur. Since the nonprofit’s founding in 1867, the answer has always been negative, but that will soon change.
“What a significant piece of history, to have that in the Quad Cities really fits the mission of what the Putnam is,” she added. “The great parts of history are here for our people here.
“We are so excited, and can’t believe it’s happening,” Yang said of future Dino Days. “We’re looking forward to bringing a dinosaur to the community.”
Throughout the multi-year project, the museum plans to keep the community involved with project updates, including the naming contest, a dino lab allowing guests to see the prepping of the bones, multiple appearances around town and much more.
The Putnam Museum, a Smithsonian Affiliate, exists to preserve, educate and connect people to the wonders of science, culture, and history. For more information about events and exhibits, visit putnam.org.
