sue essays

sue essays Sue is the largest, most complete, and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus Rex ever found. Fossil hunter Sue Hendrickson discovered the T. Rex in the Badlands of South Dakota. In 1990 Sue Hendrickson was working for a commercial fossil collecting team from the Black Hills Institute at a dig site in South Dakota. Early on the morning of August 12th, the team found that their truck had a blown tire. Most of the team went to town to get it fixed, but Sue decided to stay behind and look for fossils. Within minutes she saw some bone fragments on the ground. She scanned the nearby cliffs to see where the fragments had come from. Thats when she caught her first glimpse of what appeared to be a T. Rex. When her team returned they confirmed that what she had found was indeed a T. Rex, which they promptly named Sue, in honor of her find. Following a long custody battle over the true owner of Sue, it was sold at Sothebys auction house in 1997. The biding ended eight minutes after it had began. The field Museum had purchased Sue for almost $8.4 million (the most ever paid for a fossil). On May 17, 2000 the Field Museum unveiled Sue to the public. The skeleton on display was the real thing; the only part of Sue that was a cast replica was the skull. This was due to the enormous weight of the skull, which was too heavy to be placed on the steel armature that holds the rest of the body together. Sue Stands 13 feet tall at the hips and is 42 feet long from head to tail. Although Sues bones are always in the public eye, they are still available for scientific study from researchers and scientist from all around the world. The steel armature that holds Sues body together has been made so that each bone is cradled in a hand-forged bracket. These brackets can be unlocked individually, allowing a particular bone to be studied or removed for research, and returned to its place wit ...