The Strange Situation of Sue

 Dinosaur 13

   In April of 2021, I traveled to the field museum with my parents during spring break. It was a very cool experience where I saw fossils of all kinds. Ranging from the Paleozoic to the Cenozoic and from animals like the eurypterids to the genus Ursus which contains modern day bears. But one of the most fascinating things that I witnessed while there was Sue; the female tyrannosaurus rex. 

 

To the left here, is sue herself in the flesh (I mean rock). Why rock? Well because these bones have been in the ground for so long, the minerals in bone have all but disappeared and rock has slowly began to form around these bones. Causing theirs brownish almost black color. But this is about Sue herself and how she got from the hell creek formation of the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota to right in form of me in Chicago. Lets wind the clock back to 1990. Sue Hendrickson was the person how found this remarkable find. Then, a paleontologist named Peter Larson who led the excavation placed the dinosaurs remains in a museum in near Hill City, South Dakota. 

Although this was merely just the beginning of the documentary, I will save my summary and analysis for later. Watching this documentary, I was surprised how ruthless the FBI was. To sum it up, the FBI claim that the excavation of bones was done on federal land and thus was the property of the federal government. Larson and his colleagues were charged with numerous crimes during a 1995 trial and according to Larson himself "If you add up the time served for each of those counts, it comes to 353 years for me. . .which is longer than Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to prison for, and he killed and ate, like, 15 people." As someone who whishes to be a paleontologist with my degree, it certainly bring into perspective the risks that comes with digging up fossils. One minute you realize that this is one of the most complete and largest finds of the time and on the other, you are being indited for conspiracy and custom violations. I knew I was going to like this documentary as soon as I turned it on and I am glad I was able to gain a new perspective of the inherent dark side of this career.