“You’ve never held the horn of a triceratops with teeth marks from a T. rex, have you?” Billy Doran asks a wide-eyed boy shaking his head. Doran hands him the horn, then begins reenacting the battle between the two prehistoric beasts, thrashing back and forth to show how the horn likely got its bite mark. “Triceratops was the size of an elephant, but T-Rex was so strong he could eat a cow in one bite. So strong he could bite your car in half.”

The boy nods, transfixed on Doran. It’s early afternoon, and “Dinosaur Billy,” as Doran is locally known, has just finished leading 18 fifth graders from Eagle County Charter Academy on a tour through his Museum at Dinosaur Junction. The museum opened three summers ago off the Miller Ranch Open Space in Edwards and has quickly become a prime attraction among locals and visitors alike. Much of that is due to its high-energy founder and his ridiculous knowledge of all things paleontology, but the museum also connects the valley’s past with its present in a singular way.

Today, Doran is dressed in jeans and weathered boots with a dark button-down shirt and the sleeves rolled up. He has gray stubble beneath a hat that he calls his good luck charm. “Pretty much anything I’ve ever found, I’ve been wearing this hat,” he says, stroking a piece of polished dinosaur bone above the brim.

Doran has lived in the valley for 35 years and has spent much of it searching for fossils—dinosaurs, mainly, but he’s happy with anything prehistoric: turtles, crocodiles, footprints, shark teeth, what have you. Two years ago, while hiking on BLM land north of Wolcott, he stumbled upon his biggest find yet: a Camarasaurus skeleton, potentially in its entirety. He isn’t allowed to excavate it yet (part of why he opened the museum is to establish a repository where it can be examined and exhibited). But the skeleton marked the 10th dinosaur he’s found in Eagle County and provided momentum for his many ideas, starting with the museum.

The space is filled with fossils as well as three large replica skeletons made possible by local donors. Doran uses dozens of interpretive signs to augment the visual displays, which also include flora from the periods in focus—a time roughly spanning 170 million years. During a presentation, Doran breaks down the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous eras and relates what was happening in Eagle County at the time. There were no mountains yet; instead, a giant ocean filled the valley. When an asteroid hit Earth 65 million years ago, ending the dinosaurs’ reign, so too did it leave countless fossils among us. “If every skeleton in Colorado stood up, we’d be shoulder to shoulder,” he says.

Doran, who also gives private talks and presentations in Beaver Creek Village, hopes to one day turn the museum into a much larger institution, attracting scientists and amateur paleontologists from around the world. He also wants to create local scholarships for kids to pursue the natural sciences as a career.

“In a time when everything is so virtual, paleontology is still such a visceral, tangible thing,” he says. “You can hold on to something, cross eons of time, and become part of that animal’s story. I tell the kids, that’s what’s so exciting about this: We never know what we’re going to find tomorrow.”

Tickets to the museum (1121 Miller Ranch Rd, Edwards) cost $12 for adults and $10 for kids (free under 3). It’s open Wednesday–Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

Mission Posse-able

How to give your kid an unforgettable summer adventure with Wolcott’s Fossil Posse.

Before Billy Doran opened his dinosaur museum in Edwards, he was best known as the proprietor of Fossil Posse Adventures, a twice-a-week kids field camp that takes place all summer in Wolcott. This will be the camp’s eleventh year in operation, and it’s just as wondrous as when it started. There are tools, dig pits, dinosaur sculptures, and many pieces from Doran’s own fossil collection to show participants what is available here.

In a way, the scene feels like Jurassic Park, by design. Kids get to hold and examine real fossils, including teeth, skulls, and bones, then excavate their own specimens at the dinosaur bone quarry. Doran gives a presentation and takes questions, then everyone digs for fossils behind the camp. “That’s the ancient ocean floor,” Doran says. “Sometimes kids find shark teeth, oysters, clams, or rocks with crocodile scrapes on them.” When they leave, they take home plaster molds they’ve created—a small piece of the prehistoric world.

The camp runs June through September, Wednesdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The cost is $70 per kid (water and snacks included).