August 12th...This Day in History (Now with links to other events)

Skeleton of Tyrannosaurus Rex discovered 1990

 

On this day in 1990, fossil hunter Susan Hendrickson discovers three huge bones jutting out of a cliff near Faith, South Dakota. They turn out to be part of the largest-ever Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever discovered, a 65 million-year-old specimen dubbed Sue, after its discoverer.

Amazingly, Sue’s skeleton was over 90 percent complete, and the bones were extremely well-preserved. Hendrickson’s employer, the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, paid $5,000 to the land owner, Maurice Williams, for the right to excavate the dinosaur skeleton, which was cleaned and transported to the company headquarters in Hill City. The institute’s president, Peter Larson, announced plans to build a non-profit museum to display Sue along with other fossils of the Cretaceous period.

In 1992, a long legal battle began over Sue. The U.S. Attorney’s Office claimed Sue’s bones had been seized from federal land and were therefore government property. It was eventually found that Williams, a part-Native American and member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, had traded his land to the tribe two decades earlier to avoid paying property taxes, and thus his sale of excavation rights to Black Hills had been invalid. In October 1997, Chicago’s Field Museum purchased Sue at public auction at Sotheby’s in New York City for $8.36 million, financed in part by the McDonald’s and Disney corporations.

Sue’s skeleton went on display at the Field Museum in May 2000. The tremendous T.rex skeleton–13 feet high at the hips and 42 feet long from head to toe–is displayed in one of the museum’s main halls. Another exhibit gives viewers a close-up view of Sue’s five foot-long, 2,000-pound skull with its 58 teeth, some as long as a human forearm.

Sue’s extraordinarily well-preserved bones have allowed scientists to determine many things about the life of T.rex. They have determined that the carnivorous dinosaur had an incredible sense of smell, as the olfactory bulbs were each bigger than the cerebrum, the thinking part of the brain. In addition, Sue was the first T.rex skeleton to be discovered with a wishbone, a crucial discovery that provided support for scientists’ theory that birds are a type of living dinosaur. One thing that remains unknown is Sue’s actual gender; to determine this, scientists would have to compare many more T.rex skeletons than the 22 that have been found so far.

 (More Events on This Day in History)

• American Revolution

• 1776 Washington anticipates British strategy

• Automotive

• 1988 “Tucker: The Man & His Dream” debuts

• Civil War

• 1862 John Hunt Morgan captures a Federal garrison at Gallatin

• Cold War

• 1961 East Germany begins construction of the Berlin Wall

• Crime

• 1964 Great Train robber escapes from prison

• Disaster

• 2000 Russian sub sinks with 118 onboard

• General Interest

• 1676 King Philip’s War ends
• 1898 Armistice ends the Spanish-American War
• 1953 Soviets test “Layer-Cake” bomb
• 1973 Nicklaus sets title record
• 1985 JAL air crash
• 30 Cleopatra commits suicide

• Hollywood

• 1964 James Bond creator Ian Fleming dies
• 2014 Hollywood icon Lauren Bacall dies

• Literary

• 1774 English poet laureate Robert Southey is born

• Music

• 1939 The Wizard of Oz movie musical premieres in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin

• Old West

• 1820 Fur trader Manuel Lisa dies

• Sports

• 1978 Rising NFL star paralyzed by hit

• Vietnam War

• 1965 Henry Cabot Lodge sworn in as Ambassador to Vietnam
• 1969 VC launch new offensive

• World War I

• 1914 British Parliament passes Defense of the Realm Act

• World War II

• 1938 Hitler institutes the Mother’s Cross
• 1941 Roosevelt and Churchill confer, map out short- and long-term goals