Licensed LEGO sets are at their most popular these days, with plenty of movie and video game properties getting the brick treatment. Some intricate builds come from the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World franchises, with massive scale models of dinosaurs, fossils, play sets for kids, and everything in between.
Some of my favorites have been the the more display-focused builds, including the massive LEGO Tyrannosaurus Rex Fossil set we put together last year. So if you’re the proud owner of that behemoth, the new Triceratops Fossil build would look perfect right next to it (if you have enough space).
Price: $109.99Pieces: 1,154Ages: 18+Set #: 77985
The 1,154-piece set took around three hours to complete in one sitting, so as I normally do for my build articles for IGN, I threw on the first movie and locked in. This set comes spread among 10 numbered bags and one massive instruction manual. The opening pages of the manual offer some insight into both the Jurassic Park film and the anatomy and history of the triceratops, and they were genuinely interesting reads before fully diving in.
I started with assembling the Dr. Gerry Harding minifigure, the Chief Veterinarian of Jurassic Park. He plays only a small role in the first film, appearing in an early scene where he tends to an ill triceratops. Still, it’s nice to see LEGO giving love to minor characters like this. I then assembled a detailed base with foliage and information plaque for the good doctor.
After that, I got started on the main display base, which is made of two completely identical flat bases that connect to each other seemlessly. Triceratops from the Cretaceous period typically inhabited wetlands with plenty of plants to eat, and the build reflects that well. At the end of each base is a small representation of water and plants that actually existed during that time.
The 1,154-piece set took around three hours to complete in one sitting.
As with any other licensed LEGO set, this kit has a handful of Easter eggs and call backs to its source material. Here, one of my favorites is a 1×1 translucent brick of the mosquito trapped in fossilized amber you see throughout the film. It’s pretty awesome.
The dark forest green foliage pieces that make up some of the plants on the base are a detailed leafy shape that could be used for plenty of other cool custom builds in the future. In any case, finishing up the base meant adding finishing touches around the display structural pillars, like adding rocks and those fancy new tree pieces.
Now we get into building out the triceratops fossil itself. This portion starts with the spine, which includes ball-and-socket join pieces to snap the limbs onto later, and is attached directly onto the black pillar posts on the base. From here, I built the entirety of the skeleton onto the spine base. I initially thought I’d build the body in full first and then attach to the base, but this technique was actually a little easier. Once I was finished, I was curious if you could remove the body in full from the base. In short, the answer is yes, but it was a bit of a headache to get it off cleanly; you’ll have to finagle some other parts to take it off.
Assembling the animal’s spine and vertebrae is quite literally one of the most satisfying LEGO build experiences I’ve had in a while. The way the designers were able to emulate the curvature and shape of a triceratops spine and tail, and the anatomically-correct ribcage is extremely impressive. I thought at first I was just in store for a fun little triceratops build, not thinking much of it. But when I started assembling multiple vertebrae, groin bones, and individually-built toe bones, I knew I was in for a really fun build.
This is also one of the most intricate sets I’ve done, and after a handful of mistakes had to go back to previous steps to correct them. That’s probably where this set’s 18+ (LEGO set for adults) age suggestion comes in. There may or may not be pieces missing in the final build because it was too late to unassemble certain regions, but it ended up just fine both structurally and aesthetically.
Once the torso was complete, the next step was putting together its limbs. Both pairs of legs were just as intricately designed as the rest of its body, and the technique used to represent the animal’s skeletal hands and toes was really cool to see come to fruition. Each joint is attached via ball-and-socket, and snapped easily into place on the already-assemble spine portion from much earlier. From here, all the limbs are posable. I just recreated what’s on the box, but you have free reign to display it however you’d like.
Similar to the spine, assembling the tail was extremely satisfying. I don’t know what it is about LEGO bricks lining in a uniform shape, but it scratched an itch in my brain that I never knew I had. The way the set uses the shapes of different pieces to represent bones is really creative, and the tail portion represents this nicely.
Finally, it was time to build the head. It started with the skull structure, leading into the beak and eye sockets. Naturally, this is just as detailed as the rest of the body even with its smaller piece count, and I could see it all coming together nicely even without the more defined features. In another fun nod to the first Jurassic Park movie, a dark green frog piece is used to represent the triceratops’ tongue, which I can only imagine is referencing the Dr. Harding scene mentioned earlier.
After snapping in its jaw, which is also posable, it was time to put the finishing touches on this incredibly fun build, and where the prehistoric animal gets its namesake: It’s horns. Curved LEGO pieces are hard to get right, but with the right attachment techniques, the two horns look really accurate to real-life fossils. I put together the rest of its crown, and voila! A badass LEGO Triceratops fossil. It stands just over 8 inches tall and is almost a foot and a half long, so it shouldn’t be terribly difficult to display it.
The finished product is a great display piece for both LEGO collectors and die-hard Jurassic Park / World fans. The dispaly base is more than just a structural piece used to prop up the main attraction, with plenty of added detail and love put into it. The inclusion of an information plaque is another welcome detail, and the Dr. Gerry Harding minifigure is an unexpected but great addition to the growing list of minifigures from the movies.
The LEGO Dinosaur Fossils: Triceratops releases June 1 on the LEGO Store, but you can preorder it now.
Myles Obenza is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Bluesky @mylesobenza.bsky.social.
