Juliasaurus Brings a 154-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur to Hollytrees Museum
A dinosaur fossil that once sat in private hands is now drawing public attention in Colchester. Juliasaurus, a 154-million-year-old theropod discovered in Wyoming’s Late Jurassic Morrison Formation in 2020, is on view at Hollytrees Museum in the U.K. through November, where it appears as part of Discover: Museum Wonders.
The specimen is substantial: roughly 20 feet long and estimated to have weighed just over 1,300 pounds. David Aaron gallery brokered the loan to the museum, which is housed in an 18th-century Georgian townhome and says the display marks the first time a dinosaur has ever been shown in Essex county’s second-largest city.
Juliasaurus remains scientifically unresolved. At first, experts thought it might be Allosaurus, the well-known carnivore that lived about 90 million years before Tyrannosaurus rex, or perhaps Marshosaurus, a smaller bipedal predator. But closer comparison raised questions. Differences in the skull, pelvis, and air sac structures within the vertebrae suggest the fossil may not fit either category cleanly.
That uncertainty is part of what makes the loan significant. The museum says the display will also create an opportunity to study the fossil for the first time, a reminder that privately held dinosaur material can still hold major scientific value. David Aaron has already been involved in a similar case: last year, the gallery helped present the mysterious Enigmacursor fossil to the National History Museum in London, where a private donor later acquired it and gifted it for further examination.
For Colchester, Juliasaurus is both a public spectacle and a research opportunity — a rare moment when a fossil’s market history and scientific future briefly align.
