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A rare juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex fossil found by three children on a family hike in the North Dakota badlands nearly two years ago will soon be on display at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the museum said Tuesday.

The unlikely discovery was made in July 2022 by brothers Jessin and Liam Fisher, their father Sam Fisher and their cousin Kaiden Madsen. Unsure of what his family had just stumbled upon, Sam turned to an old high school friend, paleontologist Tyler Leeson, for help.

After obtaining a dig permit from the Bureau of Land Management, which manages the land where the discovery was made, Lyson, the museum’s curator of paleontology, went to North Dakota in 2023 with a crew and the children to dig up the fossil.

When he started the project, Lyson thought a dino might be something more ordinary, he said in a video interview released by the museum. However, when he found the most diagnostic part of the fossil, the teeth, he said he knew “the trio of young fossil hunters” had found something really special.

“When we told everyone, the euphoria was incredible; just a remarkable, remarkable moment,” Lyson said. “I mean, it’s not every day you find an amazing dinosaur like that.”

Young T. rex fossils are not an everyday find. The one, named by the museum as “Teen Rex,” is one of only four juvenile T. rex fossils that have been found on Earth, Lyson said.

“When you’re in a national park, you see deer, elk and moose, but you don’t see mountain lions or wolves,” Lyson said. “You don’t see these apex predators because there just aren’t that many of them. So to find a T. rex at all and to find one complete is really special.”

Although they haven’t completed the histology yet, Layson said the dinosaur is estimated to be between 12 and 14 years old. Lyson said it would have weighed about half the weight of some of the more famous T. rex specimens.

Jessin, an aspiring paleontologist, told the museum he was quite pleased with his find – hoping it would lead him down the same path as Leeson – something the experienced vertebrate paleontologist found encouraging.

“It’s a big deal because of the history of the discovery. It’s just an amazing, heart-warming story where you have three kids looking for fossils in the North Dakota wastelands and they find the king of them all, the T-Rex,” Lyson said in his museum video.

The fossil will be on display from June 21 in a temporary museum exhibit called “Discovering Teen Rex.” A documentary film telling the story of the boys’ discovery will also be shown in the museum’s Infinity Theatre.