Grusenmeyer-Woliner

Baby Jane is a juvenile dinosaur from the upper Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota, a sequence of rocks dating to the final few hundred thousand years of the Cretaceous, just below the 66-million-year-old K–Pg boundary that marks the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs. Her skull provides a rare glimpse into the last moments of dinosaur history.

Triceratops, the species to which Baby Jane likely belongs, is one of the most iconic dinosaurs, known for its enormous skull, large bony frill, and three horns. This impressive anatomy protected the animal from predators such as Tyrannosaurus rex, which lived in the same region. While long considered primarily defensive, recent studies indicate that the horns and frill also served in courtship and social dominance.

Baby Jane’s fossil was discovered in 1998 at the Ken Smith Ranch near Redig (South Dakota) by Frederick Nuss. It then underwent several phases of preparation: first acquired by Dinoseum GmbH in 2000, later by Eldonia in France for full preparation and mounting, and finally re-examined and prepared in 2022 by Raphus SPRL in Brussels, confirming all bones belong to the same individual.

The specimen was studied in detail in 2023 by Dr. Pascal Godefroit of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and was displayed at the RBINS in the exhibition From Asteroid Impacts to Planetary Defence, opened on 23 June 2022.