Joopiter’s dinosaur sale is led by a juvenile Triceratops skull with unusual market polish
A juvenile Triceratops skull named Sofia is set to anchor Joopiter’s “Still Here: An Auction Across Space and Time,” where the fossil carries a starting bid of $360,000 and an estimate of $600,000 to $800,000. The auction closes on July 1, 2026, and the fossil is being presented as one of the sale’s most significant natural history objects.
Sofia was discovered five years ago in Marmarth, South Dakota, in the Hell Creek Formation. According to the fossil’s provenance, it was kept “per a legal fossil lease agreement with the landowner,” and excavators at the commercial paleontology company Dinosaurs of America removed the skull in one piece. Joopiter describes the specimen as museum-grade and 60 percent complete.
That level of completeness is part of the appeal. The skull’s nose horn and brow horns are intact, along with a notable number of teeth, and the fossil is made entirely from one dinosaur rather than assembled with outside material. In paleontological terms, that gives the specimen a cleaner record of preservation and less reconstruction ambiguity than many fossils that reach the market.
Joopiter’s paleontology expert Andre Lujan said the skull’s disarticulated condition at discovery reduced taphonomic distortion, meaning the separated elements experienced less damage as sediment accumulated around them. The fossil is also unpublished, unstudied, and fresh to market, with full title, license, and unrestricted IP for its assembly.
The stand, designed by Zoltan Foltay, adds another layer of provenance to the presentation. Foltay also created the mount for the most expensive dinosaur ever sold, a detail Joopiter is clearly using to position Sofia as more than a curiosity.
The fossil leads a 24-lot sale that extends well beyond dinosaurs. Other offerings include three meteors — one from the moon and two from Mars — as well as minerals, a 1787 engraving by Jean-Dominique Cassini, and fossilized teeth, jaws, and claws priced in the low four figures. The result is a sale that treats natural history less as a cabinet of curiosities than as a field where rarity, condition, and narrative now carry real market weight.
