Justification

Why will Bob eventually need to leave this local museum?

Hell Creek Relics is a privately funded business in which Bob is owned. Each project Hell Creek Relics takes on uses money from previous exhibits to fund the next. Every undertaking since 1993 has gotten bigger, and Bob is no exception. In fact, this is our most ambitious endeavor to date. The following explains what is involved when taking on a project of this magnitude, and why Bob is not able to make this museum his permanent home.

Several hundred thousand dollars were poured into this expedition along with more funds from other backers. In order to fulfill the dream of seeing this project through to the end, it was necessary to buy out a partner with different goals.
One third of Bob is owned by the land owners who allowed Hell Creek Relics to close off pastures for several years while the excavation was taking place. The mounted skeleton seen today took 21,000 hours over a period of 10 years.
After all of this investment, it is inevitable that taxes on the sale of this exhibit will amount to another large portion of Hell Creek Relics' budget.

Any profit from the sale of Bob will be used to do what the business has always done in the past; Fund the next dig. There are tens of thousands of acres under contract that have been sitting idle for over 3 years. It is certain that the process of erosion will forever claim any fossils that are exposed for too long. We are anxious to ensure this does not happen. A tremendous find or even a new species could be waiting for discovery! We need to recover 1.4 million dollars to get back in the field, and Bob is a bargain at this price. The enormous size and almost unheard of completeness are only contributing factors making this triceratops a world class, one of a kind exhibit. The following facts support why Bob is such a bargain compared to other exhibits out there:

The metal work alone for the T-rex Sue was commissioned at a cost of over 1 million dollars. It was completed nearly twenty years ago by Phil Fraley Productions. The mounting of Bob is no less impressive and just as difficult to accomplish. According to a Mummy Tombs report on the Hadrosaur Dakota, over 1 million dollars was raised for its excavation.

Dakota was recently acquired by the Heritage Center in Bismarck for a reported 3.1 million dollars and it is mostly in the field jacket used in its excavation. Bob has had thousands of man hours devoted to cleaning, assembling, and mounting since removal from its field jacket.