This is Throwback Thursday #93. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc ...), please sent them to [email protected]. Thanks!
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Before Máximo, before SUE, before Brachiosaurus, there was George.
Before there was SUE the T. rex, there was "Gorgeous George". If you are old enough to remember when SUE first showed up at the Field Museum, you probably remember the "T. rex." in the Field Museum's main gallery, where it stood over a Lambeosaurus. As a kid, I really loved that display. It was the dinosaur centerpiece of the Field Museum from 1956 to 1992. It was incorrectly called a Gorgosaurus for most of its "life". That was corrected in 1999 and it is now known as a Daspletosaurus, a rare species of tyrannosaur. "George" originally hailed from Alberta, Canada and was found by none other than Barnum Brown of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Brown found a few of the the first T. rex specimens, including the holotype. "George" lived around 75 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. The full story can be found on the Field Museum website.
Children admire Gorgeous George shortly after the skeleton went on display in Stanley Field Hall in the 1950s.
Among dozens of other dinosaur fossils, Brown’s team recovered four skeletons of tyrannosaurs—the family of meat-eaters that includes Tyrannosaurus rex. At the time, scientists thought all four skeletons belonged to the same species: Gorgosaurus libratus. Three of the skeletons were on display at AMNH within the decade. Two can still be seen in New York today, while the third was traded to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in 1933. The fourth skeleton, which was larger but less complete than the others, remained in storage for several decades.
Fast-forward to 1955, when Field Museum board member Louis Ware approached AMNH with an offer to buy their spare Gorgosaurus. Ware’s counterparts at AMNH agreed, and soon the skeleton was on its way to Chicago. According to the March 1956 Chicago Natural History Museum Bulletin, it was considered the most important acquisition in recent years.
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From its snarling snout to the tip of its dragging tail, the completed Gorgosaurus was 26 feet long and 15 feet tall. Gilpin paired it with a prone Lambeosaurus skeleton, which was recovered by Field paleontologist Elmer Riggs in 1922 but never previously exhibited. This evocative predator-and-prey scene was unusual for the time, as dinosaur skeletons were usually given stiff, neutral poses.
Gorgeous George and the unfortunate Lambeosaurus were given pride of place at the south end of Stanley Field Hall. Staff artist Maidi Weibe rounded out the display with a miniature model of the two dinosaurs as they would have appeared in life. George debuted on March 27, 1956, with a special evening event for Field Museum members.
