This is Throwback Thursday #232. 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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So, Sue Hendrickson had a secret visit with her beloved namesake SUE the T. rex in July. The Sneed had an article in the Sun Times in July. Have a look on one of the archive sites, if you can't read it.
Archaeologist Sue Hendrickson visits her beloved “Sue the T-rex,” the world’s most complete Tyrannosaurus rex fossil at the Field Museum on Wednesday. Provided
Before we get nasty letters, Sue is an archaeologist, not a paleontologist. That caption is not a mistake or misunderstanding of archaeology vs paleontology... although, I did need to correct the spelling of archaeologist. There's an 'a' in there! Unfortunately, later in the article, the use of "field paleontologist" seems to be confused with archaeologist. Coincidently, a few of the Field Museum's Egyptian artifacts are associated with Sue's archaeology work.
Sue was a volunteer with the Black Hills Institute when she found SUE. That was way back in 1990. This was her first vist to the Field Museum since 2010 for the 10th Anniversary of the SUE's opening. Here's what Sneed wrote of her momentous find.
A digger, a diver, a searcher for sunken treasure, Hendrickson discovered the legendary dinosaur on a wild card’s chance. She was hiking with her golden retriever, Gypsy, on the “hunch” that “there might be something in an exposed cliff” she spotted on a boiling hot, foggy day in South Dakota.The discovery became an international sensation.“I still can’t believe it,” Hendrickson said. “I was a bit worn out after sleeping outside for two months while digging for dinosaur bones that day … and we were one day away from the end of the season when we developed a flat tire,” Hendrickson told me back in 1997.“So Gypsy and I decided to take a hike to a butte we missed while the rest of our crew from the Black Hills Institute drove 30 miles back into town to get the tire fixed.“I got lost, it was foggy and I walked in a circle for two hours. The fog finally lifted. Hours later, we reached the butte. It wasn’t long before I saw three articulated vertebrae exposed in the cliff.”The rest is history — millions of years of it.
After a long controvery, court trial, and auction, SUE ended up at the Field Museum in 1997. The $8 million price tag was covered generously by McDonald's Corp and Walt Disney.
