Tyrannosaurus Sue-- The Extraordinary Saga of the Largest, Most Fought Over T. Rex Ever Found

by Steve Fiffer

  wants to know that."

  Larson had plenty to tell. He had been collecting fossils since 1956,

  when at the age of 4, he had spied a small brownish object in a ditch

  near the small farm on which he lived near Mission, South Dakota,

  some 200 miles southeast of M o u n t Rushmore. His parents took him to

  Mission, where friends June a n d Albert Zeitner, w h o ran a small geo-

  logic m u s e u m , identified the find as the tooth of an oreodont, a camel-

  like m a m m a l that lived 25 million years ago.

  1 0 TYRANNOSAURUS S U E

  "From that day on, I knew I wanted to h u n t fossils," he says. "Here

  was something millions of years old, extinct, but it was still here. That

  was unbelievable. I loved living animals. I wanted to k n o w the stories of

  the animals that weren't here anymore." Within a few years, he and his

  younger brother Neal and their older brother Mark had collected

  enough fossils and rocks to open up a " m u s e u m " in a 12-foot-by- 15-

  foot outbuilding on their property, which lay within the borders of the

  Rosebud Indian Reservation. While other kids played cowboys and

  Indians, "we played curator," Larson says. They charged the adults in

  their family five cents admission.

  By eighth grade, Larson had won the state science fair with an

  exhibit on fossils. "I was kind of a nerd," he confesses.

  In 1970, he enrolled at the South Dakota School of Mines and

  Technology, one of the few schools he could afford to attend. There he

  majored in geology only because there was no major in paleontology.

  The pragmatic powers at the school pushed Larson and his fellow

  majors towards careers in the oil industry. Larson wasn't interested. "I

  wanted to h u n t for fossils," he says.

  Henry Fairfield Osborn, the distinguished scientist w h o founded

  the D e p a r t m e n t of Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of

  Natural History in 1897 and then headed the institution when it rose to

  p r o m i n e n c e at the beginning of the twentieth century, provided a job

  description of the fossil hunter, circa 1909:

  T h e fossil h u n t e r must first of all be a scientific enthusiast. He

  m u s t be willing to endure all kinds of hardships, to suffer cold

  in the early spring and the late a u t u m n and early winter

  m o n t h s , to suffer intense heat and the glare of the sun in s u m -

  mer m o n t h s , and he must be prepared to drink alkali water, and

  in some regions to fight off the attack of the mosquito and

  other pests. He must be something of an engineer in order to

  handle large masses of stone and transport them over roadless

  wastes of desert to the nearest shipping point; he must have a

  delicate and skillful touch to preserve the least fragments of

  b o n e when fractured; he must be content with very plain living,

  because the profession is seldom if ever, remunerative, a n d he is

  almost invariably underpaid; he must find his chief reward and

  IT M U S T BE A T. REX 1 1

  stimulus in the sense of discovery and in the dispatching of

  specimens to m u s e u m s which he has never seen for the benefit

  of a public which has little knowledge or appreciation of the

  self-sacrifices which the fossil hunter has made.

  This was the ideal Larson aspired to when, after graduating from

  college in 1974, he a n d fellow student Jim H o n e r t went into business—

  finding small fossils, rocks, and minerals a n d selling t h e m to colleges.

  Their company, Black Hills Minerals, a n d its successor, the Black Hills

  Institute, weren't b o r n of a desire to get rich. However, they were for-

  profit ventures. "I'm a capitalist," says Peter Larson. "I'm p r o u d to be a

  capitalist. I think the capitalist system works. It creates m o n e y so that

  wonderful things can happen."

  Larson a n d H o n e r t quickly realized that colleges weren't the only

  institutions that wanted their finds. Says Larson, "It became increasing-

  ly obvious that m u s e u m s really needed the service, because they had no

  way to get them. They didn't have the funds to send full-time people out

  searching for fossils or preparing fossils for exhibition."

  The shift from h a n d specimens to m u s e u m pieces eventually sent

  Larson searching for the biggest fossil of all. In 1977, the Natural History

  Museum of Vienna, to which Larson had helped sell an ancient turtle,

  said it would like a dinosaur. By this time he was operating as Black Hills

  Minerals and had been joined by his brother Neal and Bob Farrar, both

  graduates of the School of Mines. "We said, ' N o problem,'" Larson

  laughs, adding, "We didn't have a dinosaur. We didn't even k n o w where

  to dig dinosaurs."

  Two years later they journeyed to Faith, 150 miles northeast of Hill

  City, at the invitation of an octogenarian n a m e d Ruth Mason. Her land

  lies in a stretch of badlands called the Hell Creek Formation. As a young

  girl Ms. Mason had found what she thought were dinosaur bones on her

  property and had been trying to interest paleontologists in digging there

  since the early 1900s. The Larsons were the first to take her up on her

  offer.

  In his book The Complete T. Rex, paleontologist Jack Horner, cura-

  tor of the M u s e u m of the Rockies, based in Bozeman, M o n t a n a , p r o -

  vides the following "recipe" for making a fossil: "An animal dies. Soon

  after death its flesh rots away. Over time sediment covers the bones.

  1 2 TYRANNOSAURUS S U E

  That sediment compacts into rock. Minerals enter into the bone within

  the rock and preserve it." Recent experiments suggest that bacteria asso-

  ciated with the decaying carcass cause the minerals to precipitate out of

  groundwater, thereby fossilizing the bone.

  Sand and silt are necessary recipe ingredients. Just add water—a

  slow-moving stream or river clogged with dirt or debris will d o — a n d

  voila! Of course, there is quite a bit of time between preparation and

  presentation; only after erosion occurs and the rock is swept away will

  the fossilized bones be visible.

  The age of dinosaurs began d u r i n g the Mesozoic Era about 225 mil-

  lion years ago and lasted for 160 million years, through the Triassic,

  Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. T h e Hell Creek Formation and equiv-

  alent formations, which extend from South Dakota into Wyoming,

  Montana, and the Canadian province of Alberta, were the perfect kit-

  chens for fossil creation during the final one or two million years of the

  Cretaceous period, which lasted from about 144 million BC to 65 mil-

  lion BC. What is n o w n o r t h central N o r t h America was warm and

  swampy then, with shallow seas and winding rivers—not cool and bar-

  ren as it is today.

  D u r i n g the Cretaceous period the landscape was rich in flora simi-

  lar to the vegetation one finds in the southern United States today—

  ferns, flowering plants, palm trees, a n d redwoods. Some of the creatures

  that moved about this landscape or flew above it or swam in the seas

  and rivers live on today. Birds filled the skies. Sharks and turtles swam

  the seas
a n d rivers. Insects such as spiders and m a m m a l s similar to the

  o p o s s u m were a b u n d a n t (although during the entire 150 million years

  dinosaurs ruled the earth, no m a m m a l got m u c h larger than a house

  cat).

  O t h e r Cretaceous creatures, which have not survived the last 65

  million years, were also plentiful. Many of these were reptiles. The fly-

  ing pterosaurs d o m i n a t e d the air. Fish-like ichthyosaurs inhabited the

  seas, as did giant marine lizards, the mosasaurs. And, of course, dino-

  saurs r o a m e d the earth.

  Many kinds of dinosaurs had already become extinct as the

  Cretaceous period drew to a close, b u t large herds of duck-bills and

  Triceratops still moved about. They spent their s u m m e r s in the north,

  then migrated south to w a r m e r climes for the winter. Dominating the

  IT M U S T BE A T. REX 13

  landscape was another dinosaur—a ferocious carnivore that stood

  upwards of a dozen feet at the hip and upwards of 35 feet long from

  head to tail— Tyrannosaurus rex.

  On Mason's land, the Larsons soon found remains of the duck-

  billed dinosaur, Edmontosaurus annectens. And not just one dinosaur.

  Inexplicably, thousands of duck-bills had died there a n d were deposited

  as a b o n e bed in the graveyard quarry.

  The institute team spent the better part of the next two years exca-

  vating bones and then trying to piece t h e m together to reconstruct a

  complete dinosaur. Finally, in the spring of 1981, Peter Larson took the

  assembled bones to Switzerland. There, he hoped to sell the specimen

  with the help of Kirby Siber, w h o had invested m o n e y in the project.

  The two m e n had first met in the mid-1970s at a gem and mineral

  show in Tucson, Arizona. Larson, just starting out in the business, had

  brought several specimens to sell. He had mixed emotions about part-

  ing with his favorite, a pearl-white a m m o n i t e , an extinct relative of the

  chambered nautilus. "I marked it outrageously high, $700, because I

  really didn't want to sell it," he remembers. A French collector offered

  $450. "No thanks," said Larson. Finally, another buyer offered the full

  $700. This time Larson said, "Thanks." The institute could use the

  money.

  Soon Larson learned that the purchaser, w h o t u r n e d out to be Siber,

  had immediately resold the a m m o n i t e . . . for $1400. Any ill will toward

  Siber was mitigated by the fact that the Swiss paleontologist b o u g h t sev-

  eral pieces from Larson at the show, giving the institute a bit of finan-

  cial breathing r o o m .

  Although the duck-bill Larson took to Switzerland had been exca-

  vated over a three-year period, the institute had yet to receive any

  m o n e y for the thousands of m a n - h o u r s already spent on the project at

  the Mason Q u a r r y and in the preparation lab; Larson had never signed

  a contract with the Viennese m u s e u m . To stay afloat during this period,

  the institute had borrowed about $60,000, some at an interest rate

  exceeding 20 percent.

  While in Switzerland, Larson learned that the m u s e u m did n o t have

  the funds to purchase the duck-bill. With no apparent means for meet-

  ing his loan obligation, he feared that he might have to go out of busi-

  ness. Fortunately, another commercial collector, Allen Graffliam, put

  1 4 TYRANNOSAURUS S U E

  h i m in touch with the Ulster M u s e u m in Belfast, Ireland. The m u s e u m

  paid $150,000 for the dinosaur, but Larson didn't see any of that money

  until 1988. After paying Graffham his sales commission and Siber for

  his investment, the institute ended up making less than $1 per h o u r on

  the transaction, Larson estimates.

  Teams from the institute worked the q u a r r y for duck-bills through-

  out the 1980s, eventually reconstructing nine m o r e specimens, the last

  three bringing m o r e than $300,000 each from m u s e u m s in Japan,

  Europe, and the United States. D u r i n g this period, Larson spent time

  collecting in South America as well as in South Dakota. In 1985 the

  institute and the Peruvian government entered into a partnership that

  yielded several scientifically i m p o r t a n t specimens, including a new fam-

  ily of sharks and a previously u n k n o w n marine sloth. Larson, Siber, and

  Hendrickson also donated their time a n d m o n e y to build a m u s e u m off

  the Pan American Highway south of the Peruvian city of Nasca. The

  m u s e u m features a 12-million-year-old baleen whale that is displayed

  where it was discovered—in the sands of a desert that was once ocean.

  By 1990, the institute had become o n e of the largest suppliers of

  m u s e u m specimens in the world, doing business with, a m o n g others,

  the Smithsonian Institution, American M u s e u m of Natural History,

  Field M u s e u m , Carnegie Institute, H o u s t o n M u s e u m of Natural

  Sciences, Denver M u s e u m of Natural History, Natural History M u s e u m

  of Los Angeles County, Yale's Peabody M u s e u m , and m u s e u m s in

  Germany, Japan, a n d Great Britain. The institute was also one of the

  largest employers in Hill City (population 650), with a full-time staff of

  eleven working out of the former American Legion Hall on Main Street.

  The bright white two-story Art Deco structure built by the WPA during

  the Depression housed the institute's offices, library, fossil preparation

  lab, storage area, and gift shop, and it featured a modest showroom that

  attracted a small percentage of the 2 million tourists w h o came to the

  Black Hills each year to visit nearby M o u n t Rushmore. This showroom

  had no T. rex. Rather, it exhibited considerably smaller finds such as a

  y h - i n c h tooth from a 60-foot long prehistoric shark and n u m e r o u s col-

  orful a m m o n i t e s .

  Over the years, the institute has sold s o m e finds for considerable

  a m o u n t s of money. Still, n o n e of the principals has become wealthy.

  Excavation and reconstruction of specimens is extremely costly, and, as

  IT M U S T BE A T. REX 15

  the case of the Ulster duck-bill illustrates, sales transactions sometimes

  take years. As self-described "Republican paleontologists," the Larson

  brothers rejected the idea of applying for government grants because of

  their distaste for bureaucracy.

  Peter Larson, w h o lives in an old trailer a few yards from the insti-

  tute's back door, cites another reason for his bare-bones existence. "We

  set aside the best specimens for the m u s e u m we'd always dreamed of

  building."

  The Larson brothers did not charge admission to the institute's

  showroom, and they didn't plan on charging admission to the m u s e u m

  of their dreams, if and when it ever became a reality. "Education is the

  most i m p o r t a n t thing, and we don't believe people should have to pay

  for education," says Neal Larson. He a n d Peter and other institute

  staffers give 30 to 60 school talks a year, taking their fossil displays

  a r o u n d the Black Hills area. They also speak to amateur groups, rock

  clubs, and colleges and take people out collecting free of char
ge.

  The Larsons, Hendrickson, and an institute crew that included

  Peter's 10-year old son Matthew and Neal's 15-year-old son Jason, spent

  m u c h of the s u m m e r of 1990 in the area a r o u n d the Mason Quarry.

  Shortly after the fossil hunters arrived, they found a dead horse belong-

  ing to Maurice Williams, a one-quarter Native American whose large cat-

  tle ranch on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation lay just to the east of

  Ms. Mason's property. W h e n Williams came by to claim the animal, he

  asked Peter Larson about the dig. "He was fascinated," says Larson. "He

  said, 'I've got land with badlands on it. Why don't you come over and

  look for dinosaurs?' I said, 'Great. We don't pay a lot, but if we find some-

  thing of significance, we'll pay you.'" Williams also suggested that Larson

  call his brother Sharkey, w h o owned similar land in the area. Sharkey

  Williams, now deceased, also invited the institute to dig on his property.

  While the institute team initially found little on Maurice Williams's

  land, they did find a few partial Triceratops skulls on his brother's p r o p -

  erty. On the m o r n i n g of August 12, they were preparing to excavate a

  skull when they noticed a flat tire on their collecting truck, a rusting,

  green 1975 Suburban. They changed the tire and saw that the spare was

  also dangerously low on air. His tire p u m p broken, Larson decided to

  drive into Faith to get the two tires fixed. He invited Hendrickson to join

  h i m on the 45-minute drive.

  1 6 TYRANNOSAURUS S U E

  She declined. The dig was to end in a couple of days, and she want-

  ed to explore the sandstone cliff that had been calling her ever since she

  had spied it from several miles away two weeks earlier. "I'd kept think-

  ing, I gotta get over there," Hendrickson recalls, "but you're so tired, just

  physically exhausted at the end of the day." Maurice Williams had asked

  that they keep their vehicles off his property, so Hendrickson knew that

  she would have to walk to the cliff over rugged terrain. Now she finally

  had the time to do it.

  "It was foggy," she says. "It never gets foggy in South Dakota in the

  s u m m e r , but it was foggy that day." Although the rare mist prevented

  her from seeing her destination, Hendrickson set out with her dog on

  the 7-mile hike to the cliff. "I told myself, 'Don't walk in a circle,' but