ROUNDUP — A hidden gem for dinosaur lovers is only an hour away from Billings.
The newest exhibit at the Musselshell Valley Historical Museum, the Dino Depot, has a new artifact, which propelled the museum to become the newest stop on the Montana Dinosaur Trail. Starting spring 2026, the Dino Depot will be the 15th spot on the famous scavenger hunt for dinosaur lovers across the state.
Learn more about Sir William the Tyrannosaur and his significance below:
The Musselshell Valley Historical Museum highlights important pieces from Musselshell Valley history from the 1890s to the current era.
Inside of the museum, visitors will find a coal mining exhibit, a one room school house, a large taxidermy collection, gun registry, and so much more.
Because of its recent historical artifacts, the newest exhibit, the Dino Depot, featuring fossils from the late Cretaceous period, seems out of place. However, it represents what Musselshell County looked like over 65 million years ago.
"I do not think we're a boring museum. I think if you come in, you're going to find something that you are intrigued by," said Serena Cottrell, a three-year greeter at the museum.
The Dino Depot opened in 2023. While the exhibit itself isn't new, the museum's 3D-printed tyrannosaur skull model is.
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Sir William the Teratophoneus is the newest artifact on display in the exhibit. In 2002, Sir William's skull was discovered by William Stein 30 miles northeast of Roundup. Afterwards, the Triebold Paleontology and Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Colorado kept the fossil until last year. In 2024, the resource center was able to construct five 3D-printed replicas of the skull, one of which was donated to the Musselshell Valley Historical Museum.
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Eric Eliasson, a Roundup electrician, was part of the reason the 3D-printed skull was donated to the museum.
"I heard rumors about a tyrannosaur being discovered east of Roundup, and so I did a lot of online searches. I was finally able to track down the company, Triebold Paleontology... Just technology and everything has finally gotten to the point where we could digitally reconstruct the skull from the pieces we have, and then 3D print all the missing pieces," said Eliasson on Wednesday.
Eliasson has been a board member at the museum for two years. While his full-time employment is as an electrician, his hobby is paleontology. The museum's fossils even include triceratops bones Eliasson found out on a paleontology dig.
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According to Eliasson, Sir William is a teratophoneus, which is a tyrannosaur, not to be confused with the tyrannosaurus-rex, which came about 10 million years later. Eliasson said the Roundup museum is the only museum in Montana to own one of the five 3D printed models of Sir William.
"It's nice to see the dream come to fruition, as far as getting the exhibit up and running," he said.
While museum greeter Cottrell may not have the same interest in paleontology as Eliasson, she's just as excited as Sir William's arrival to Roundup.
"To have Sir William, that is so awesome that we got that cast back from Sir William. That is just phenomenal," she said on Wednesday.
Cottrell told MTN her favorite part about volunteering in the museum is the personal history behind each of the artifacts. Throughout the process, she's grown fond of palentology for that reason.
"I got to hold a mammoth tooth, and I'm going, 'This thing lived four million years ago. And it lived and probably walked on the same area that I did,'" she said.
According to Cottrell, Sir William's arrival is one of the main reasons the museum was added to the Montana Dinosaur Trail. She said while the museum has been added, it won't be an official stop until 2026, though.
"I thought it was good. I really did. It's exciting," she said.
Sir William can be viewed at the museum every day of the week during the summer months from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
The museum has free admission, so it relies on donations and memberships to add more fossils and artifacts. On Aug. 21, the museum is hosting an ice cream social fundraiser outside of the Dino Depot. Cottrell said she recommends Dino Depot visitors explore the rest of the museum.
"We have a lot of interesting things here," she said.
"It was a great accomplishment to join the dinosaur trail, to be acknowledged that we have specimens here that are unique to us," said Eliasson.
To learn more about the Musselshell Valley Historical Museum, visit their website at this link.
