TAMPA — With a dramatic drop of a sheet of plywood, the Glazer Children’s Museum on Wednesday removed a giant dinosaur skull with iconic horns and the spiky head of a triceratops. It will be on display starting Memorial Day weekend.

The noggin belonged to a triceratops nicknamed “Big John,” which set the Guinness World Record for the largest triceratops skeleton when it was discovered in South Dakota in 2014.

The entire skeleton will be presented for the first time on May 26 at a new exhibition on the third floor of the museum. Although an Italian team of fossil restorers was ready to assemble the entire dinosaur this week, museum chief executive Sarah Cole said she wanted to take a moment for Wednesday’s big reveal “to build excitement”.

After removing one side of the plywood case Wednesday, a three-man team strained to wheel the 700-pound skull out to reveal the stunning sight of the 66-million-year-old three-horned headplate. Its head is surrounded by a broad crest of bone and studded with small spikes, which scientists say created a frightening appearance as it stomped its way through the Dakotas and Montana.

Also present at the unwrapping was Tampa businessman Sidd Pagidipati, president of Ayon Capitol and Better Health Group, who paid $7.7 million for the skeleton at auction in 2021, the highest price ever paid for a non-T dinosaur skeleton .rex. . Pagidipati brought along his four-year-old son Aren, who, like his father, saw the huge headpiece for the first time.

“This is wonderful, we’ve been waiting to see this for several years,” Pagidipati said. He was adamant that there was no room in his home for the fossil he had purchased. “We want it to be available to kids everywhere.”

His son’s eyes were wide as his father said, “Look, he’s bigger than you,” and Aren stroked the giant’s horn gently.

“You’re the only kid who will ever make it,” Cole said.

The head itself is the size of a golf cart, measuring 9 feet long and 6 feet wide. It will sit atop a skeleton measuring 26 feet long and 10 feet high, the size of a moving van. In the exhibition space, the bones are currently lined up on long plastic sheets, arranged like one of those skeleton sets sold to children.

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Elia Smaniotto, a fossil restorer from the Italian company Zoic, which first processed the excavated bones and produced the skeleton for display and auction, compared his current work in Tampa to “a big jigsaw puzzle” where he is putting all the pieces back together. It can be done in a few days, he said.

Next, the museum will be working on an immersive dinosaur exhibit that will take children and adults alike into the world of Big John. The exhibit will feature tunnels with transparent domes where curious children can jump in and see the skeleton from below.

When the exhibit opens Memorial Day weekend, the museum will waive its rule that currently prevents adults without children from entering the children’s museum, spokeswoman Kate White said. The dinosaur will be included in the admission fee, but registration will be required because they will be doing timed entries, White said.

Triceratops is an unusual dinosaur, Smithsonian notes in a recent article. It looks intimidating, but it was a herbivore. Its three horns allowed the triceratops to lock horns with each other.

The Big John skeleton helps historians piece together more information about how the animals lived. A recent analysis the scientific journal “Nature” noted that an unexpected hole in Big John’s crest indicates that the opening is a battle wound, possibly caused by a horn slipping during a fight. They also found evidence of wound healing, so he may not have died from the wound, but probably from an infection from it, the journal noted.