Field Museum Celebrates Sue the T. Rex's 25th Birthday

August 12, 2015

Twenty-five years ago today, the vehicle of a dinosaur hunting crew planning to leave a site in western South Dakota at the end of an expedition was found to have a flat tire. While others went into town to make the repair, Sue Hendrickson, a member of that crew, decided to have a look in an area the expedition had not searched. It was a good choice.

What she discovered now stands sentinel at the north entrance to the Field Museum’s central Stanley Field Hall. Paying $8.36 million, the museum won a heated auction for the largest, most intact T. rex ever found, the dinosaur skeleton known as Sue not because of its sex (undetermined) but after its founder.

Some 67 million years after its heyday, it is also, arguably, the most famous dinosaur in the world. Replicas of the 42-foot-long giant have been on tour almost since the day Sue was unveiled at the Field in 2000.

“When you look at who’s talking about her, the requests we get on social media, she’s a popular gal,” said Emily Waldren, the museum’s public relations director.

Today the museum marks Sue’s “Unearth Day" not with a cake wheeled up to the fossil, but with a media event meant to spotlight the Field’s birthday-party hosting capabilities. But, more important, it’s a time to think about — and give thanks to — that nail or piece of glass or whatever it was that punctured the tire that brought the T. rex to the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan.



Source:  Chicago Tribune