Mad About Science

By Brenden Bobby
Reader Columnist

The 1993 film Jurassic Park, based on Michael Chrichton’s 1990 novel of the same name, converted an entire generation of kids into dinosaur fanatics. It was an action-thriller with some brainy concepts to boot; a wild ride that made you think about morality, ethics, evolution and rampaging danger-chickens with a hunger for defecating lawyers.

Many of the concepts presented by the film were fairly new to the public at a time when paleontology was reinventing itself. The 1990s were the first wave in the popularization of science, where figures like Bill Nye were paving the way for charismatic scientists of the new century like Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

However, the arguments of ethics, integrity, the value of educating the public and throwing it all out for a quick buck were subjects that paleontologists had been wrestling with for decades — and it all came to a head with the 1990 discovery of Sue.

Sue, the Tyrannosaurus rex at the Evolving Planet evolution exhibition at the Field Natural History Museum in Chicago.
Courtesy photo.

Sue is the skeleton of a remarkably well preserved Tyrannosaurus rex and one of the largest and most complete specimens that humans have ever found. It was named after the woman who found it, Susan Hendrickson, a fossil hunter and salvager responsible for literally half the world’s collection of amber-preserved butterfly specimens.

In the summer of 1990, Hendrickson spotted bones emerging from a cliff face while waiting for one of her employer’s vehicles to be repaired. Her employer at the time was the Black Hills Institute, a commercial fossil hunting company headed by Peter Larson, who embodies just about everything that frustrated academic paleontologists in the field of fossil recovery and study.

The Black Hills Institute is, at its core, a treasure-hunting firm that specializes in fossil extraction and preservation in order to sell the fossils for a massive profit to private collectors. The company would pay landowners a fee in order to prospect their land and extract fossils that they could go on to sell for tens of thousands, or even millions, of dollars. 

This practice understandably frustrated landowners who felt stiffed when practically giving away such valuable resources. This also frustrated academic scientists, who witnessed valuable sources of knowledge and the few hidden threads of evolution slipping away into private collections, never to be seen again.

This is exactly what happened with the excavation of Sue. Larson paid landowner Maurice Williams $5,000 in order to extract the fossilized remains. Later, during court testimony, Williams expressed that this transaction was not a sale, but a fee for the Black Hills Institute to extract and clean the fossils so that Williams could sell them later. Whether or not this was the original intent or pursued later once the true value of the fossils was known has never been made clear. 

Further complicating matters was the fact that the fossil was actually extracted from land held in a trust by the U.S. Department of the Interior. The FBI and South Dakota National Guard raided the facility where Sue was being held and confiscated the bones until the courtroom battles were concluded, eventually in Williams’ favor.

Larson ended up spending two years in prison for unrelated charges of improper customs declaration of foreign currency and illegal removal of fossils from government land.

Sue went to auction through Sotheby’s, where it was feared that the dinosaur’s remains would disappear from the public forever. Fortunately for all of us, a coalition of funding formed behind The Field Museum in Chicago. Donations from McDonald’s, The Ronald McDonald House, and Walt Disney Parks and Resorts allowed the museum to purchase the remains for $8.4 million.

The museum’s study of Sue has revolutionized how both scientists and the public view and understand T. rexes, and dinosaurs in general. 

Damage is present on the bones from multiple sources, including a fractured fibula that improperly healed in Sue’s lifetime. Sue’s jaw is pock-marked by the effects of a parasitic infection that mirrors Trichomonas gallinae, which affects small birds like finches to this day (tragically suffocating or starving them with swelling in the neck). The effects of gout have also been observed on the bones. 

Our view of these afflictions spanning tens of millions of years gives scientists insight into study beyond dinosaurs — understanding the long history of parasites and how swelling affects bones much larger than our own gives tremendous insight and knowledge to medical professionals seeking to cure our current ailments. The knowledge gleaned from the study of Sue may never have been possible had the bones disappeared into the private collection of a wealthy individual.

The over-valuation of dinosaur fossils has been a blessing and a curse to academics. The 1990s saw a gold rush of fossil digs, which helped push fresh blood into paleontology. Kids who grew up on Jurassic Park entered the field with fresh eyes and excitement for their work. As a greater number of people gleaned more knowledge of the past, scientific literacy rose for the average person — how would you survive a dinner party without rudimentary knowledge of a velociraptor?

Worth noting: Jurassic Park’s depiction of the velociraptor remains critically inaccurate. Even at the time of penning his novel, Chrichton conceded that referring to the creature as a velociraptor was inaccurate, but that the name itself was much more fearsome than the actual source of inspiration: the Utahraptor. Velociraptors were likely heavily feathered and about the size of a turkey, while the Utahraptor was about the height of an average human but the length of a sedan.

On the flip side, how many fossils exist that scientists have never seen — or may never see? Could a critical missing link bridging gaps in evolutionary history be sitting in a glass case overlooking some billionaire’s toilet right now?

The world may never know.

Stay curious, 7B.