by Steve Fiffer
Before Neal's arrival, Larson had also videotaped and shot still p h o -
tos of the find and had taken the other m e m b e r s of the team to the cliff,
including Terry Wentz, the institute's chief fossil preparator, and the two
IT M U S T BE A T. REX 23
boys, Matthew and Jason Larson. D u r i n g their weeks at the quarry,
Matthew had found m o r e than a dozen teeth apparently shed by T. rex.
Hendrickson hadn't found any, a fact that Matthew never let her forget.
Responding to his good-natured teasing, Hendrickson had laughed:
"Matt, I just want to find the whole thing." Now they would see just h o w
whole the skeleton was.
Peter Larson walked Neal to the cliff, a n d said, "Gee, can you tell me
what it is?" He was still playing the big brother.
"Well, it's big."
"Yeah."
"Is it T. rexV asked Neal, w h o had never seen such bones before.
Just like the dinosaur itself, the site of a find is of great scientific
importance. It may contain fossilized plants or bones from other
ancient creatures that provide a context for the dinosaur's life. G o o d
paleontologists and fossil hunters don't just excavate a find, they harvest
the rock a r o u n d it as well.
Example: In 1996 John Flynn, head of the Field Museum's geology
department, returned from a dinosaur dig in Madagascar with, a m o n g
other things, a 50-pound bag of dirt collected at the site. Over the next
three years, m u s e u m volunteers sifted the dirt t h r o u g h screens and then
used microscopes to look for fossils. In 1999, the m u s e u m a n n o u n c e d
that the dirt had yielded a 165-million-year-old fragment of the jaw of
a mouse-sized m a m m a l . The fragment, only half the length of a grain of
rice and containing three teeth invisible to the unaided eye, proved for
the first time that m a m m a l s were alive and sharing the world's southern
continents with dinosaurs far earlier than previously believed.
Larson's crew began by picking up all the scraps from the g r o u n d
and putting t h e m in plastic bags, which they carefully labeled. They
then bagged m u c h of the s u r r o u n d i n g dirt for future screening. Next,
they stabilized the bones sticking out from the cliff with a hardener and
covered them with burlap and plaster of Paris—a technique first
described by the English geologist Sir H e n r y T h o m a s de la Beche in
1836 and perfected in the late nineteenth century by those h u n t i n g
bones in the American West.
This was easy compared to the next task: removing 29 feet of over-
burden. For five days the Larson brothers, Hendrickson, and Wentz
worked with pick and shovel to clear the sandstone and hard soil above
2 4 TYRANNOSAURUS S U E
the skeleton. "These were the hottest days of the summer," says
Hendrickson. "The temperature was 115 plus. You're trying to find
shade, but there is none. And we don't stop at noon."
They d u b b e d the site "Tyrable Mountain."
Once d o w n to the level of the skeleton, the team would use knives,
brushes, and smaller tools to remove the bones. But before this removal
could begin, most of the bones required special treatment. Those in
danger of cracking were glued on the spot with commercial Superglue.
Those in danger of crumbling were squirted with a liquid solution that
hardened them.
D o c u m e n t a t i o n of a dig is critical. Scientists studying a specimen in
the lab want to k n o w where each and every part was found in the field.
Larson's team used a m a p p i n g technique learned from Bakker, marking
the location of each b o n e by tracing it full scale on butcher paper. They
also took still photos and videotape.
Maurice Williams visited three or four times during the excavation.
A tall, sturdy m a n , he is seen on the videotape in sunglasses, wearing a
T-shirt and baseball cap. On o n e occasion, the crew took a break and
helped h i m d e h o r n some cattle. On another occasion, the institute cam-
corder captured the following conversation between the rancher and
Peter Larson:
Williams: You are going to m o u n t her in Hill City.
Larson: Yeah.
Williams: Good. (Pause) And under that you'll write,
"Stolen from Maurice Williams."
Williams, Larson, and the others at the site all laughed at this last line.
T h e Larsons quickly determined that Sue was large for a T. rex. Her
54-inch femur suggested that she would have stood 13 feet tall at the hip
and 41 feet long, a foot taller a n d 2 to 3 feet longer than Barnum
Brown's famous T. rex at the American M u s e u m of Natural History. "At
that size, r u n n i n g at 25 to 40 miles an hour, this was one big, terrible
dinosaur," says Neal Larson.
Brown's lengthy excavation of the first M o n t a n a T. rex in the pre-
truck era presented n u m e r o u s logistical problems. Encased in plaster,
the dinosaur's pelvis alone weighed 4000 p o u n d s , far too m u c h for a
IT M U S T BE A J. REX 25
conventional horse-drawn wagon. What to do? Brown built a w o o d e n
sledge and then hitched it to a team of four horses for the 125-mile jour-
ney to the closest railroad station.
Excavating Sue was not nearly so problematic or time-consuming.
Because she was so complete and her bones were confined to such a
small area (about 25 feet by 30 feet), the crew was able to dig her out in
only 17 days. Still, they suffered several anxious moments—actually,
several anxious days.
Larson had immediately sensed that Sue "was all there." But was
she? A week after removing the overburden, her skull—the most impor-
tant part of her body from b o t h scientific and display standpoints—still
hadn't surfaced. Then, on August 27, Larson hit something with his
pick. "It's the S word," he excitedly told his crew. ("I didn't say 'skull'
because I didn't want to jinx it," he later explained.) Larson's fellow dig-
gers were skeptical.
The paleontologist took pick to rock and again hit something hard.
"I tell you it's the S word.'" But his crew remained skeptical until he
found the curve of the cheek some h o u r s later.
The good news was that they'd found Sue's skull. The bad news was
that the nose was buried u n d e r Sue's hips, all 1500 p o u n d s of them. "It
seemed that it had stuck its head between its legs and kissed itself good-
bye," Neal Larson later said with a laugh.
Putting an end to this 67-million-year good-bye kiss on site would
have meant saying good-bye to the skull. It was sure to be severely d a m -
aged by any attempt to extricate it from the pelvis. T h e crew decided to
remove these bones as a unit in a plaster-jacketed block. Then, back at
the institute, the Larsons and Wentz could figure out the safest way to
separate them.
Peter Larson says that he told Williams he would pay h i m for the
fossil "early on" after the discovery. Finding the skull triggered "negoti-
ations." Says Larson: "After we could see what was there, I told Maurice,
'This is a really good specimen. I'll give you $5000 for
it,' and he said,
'Fine.' I wrote on the check what it was for."
The check was marked "For t h e r o p o d skeleton Sue/8-14-90-MW."
Williams deposited the check the day after he received it.
Excavated bones were wrapped in foil and then jacketed in plaster.
By August 31, the crew, which had grown to six, had removed every-
2 6 TYRANNOSAURUS S U E
thing except for the big block containing the skull and pelvis, sacrum,
several dorsal vertebrae, ribs, the right leg, some foot bones, and, they
hoped, the right forelimb. With continuous undercutting and plaster-
ing, they had this block ready to be removed by 5:00 PM on September
1. Because a large rainstorm was heading their way, they decided not to
wait overnight to pull the 9-foot-by-7-foot 9000-pound block from the
g r o u n d and o n t o the trailer. Three h o u r s later the trailer and three
trucks carrying another 5 tons headed back to Hill City. There, the insti-
tute would begin the task of readying Sue for study a n d display.
After spending the night in Hill City, Peter Larson and Sue
Hendrickson climbed into their respective trucks a n d drove in tandem
to Bozeman where they showed the pictures of their find to the M u s e u m
of the Rockies' H o r n e r and discussed the fossil's future—a future that at
the time looked quite rosy.
T h e couple's future was m u c h bleaker. Although they still cared
deeply for one another a n d had just collaborated on what appeared to
be o n e of the greatest dinosaur finds in history, they remained commit-
ted to e n d i n g their r o m a n c e . Twenty-four h o u r s after reaching
Bozeman, Hendrickson bid Larson good-bye and left to visit her family
in Seattle. She and Larson were sure they'd see each other again, b u t
never in their wildest dreams did they imagine the bizarre chain of
events that would soon bring t h e m face to face and cause them both
such pain.
Although she felt a deep kinship with her namesake, Hendrickson
sought no remuneration for her efforts. The thrill of discovering the
best T. rex ever was enough. And besides, Larson had said that he want-
ed to build a new m u s e u m in Hill City and make Sue its star attraction.
No o n e had ever gotten rich finding a fossil, Hendrickson told herself,
and no one was going to get rich because of this dinosaur.
2
N E V E R , E V E R FOR S A L E
"Six hundred thousand dollars," Redden said.
The auction floor was abloom in blue paddles.
"Sevenhundredthousandeighthundredtousandninehundred-
thousand." Redden had all he could do to harvest the bids.
Sue Hendrickson sighed. Grounded in reality, she sensed
that Peter Larson's angel might not have enough money to win
back the T. rex.
A fading color photograph, circa 1960, hangs on a wall at the Black Hills
Institute. The picture is set in a farmyard, where four young children—
three boys and a girl—stand by a table full of bones in front of a small
wooden building. On a nearby post that is a d o r n e d by a bleached cow
skull, a cardboard sign lettered in a child's h a n d identifies the building.
"MUSEUM," it boldly proclaims.
Three weeks after bringing Sue h o m e to Hill City, two of the boys
in the photograph, n o w grown m e n , a n n o u n c e d in the Rapid City
Journal that they had found what they believed to be the largest, most
complete Tyrannosaurus rex. Peter a n d Neal Larson added that they
intended to make the dinosaur the star attraction in a new m u s e u m —
a m u s e u m they had dreamed of building for m o r e than 30 years. "The
largest meat eater ever to walk the face of o u r planet would surely draw
visitors to o u r door," Peter said. T h e T. rex will "never, ever" be for sale,
Neal told the newspaper. Few newspapers or magazines outside South
2 7
2 8
TYRANNOSAURUS S U E
Dakota carried the story of the find or the plans for the m u s e u m ; Sue
may have been o n e of the biggest fossils in the world, but she wasn't
famous outside greater Rapid City . . . yet.
The brothers explained that Sue appeared to have a complete pelvis;
nearly complete torso and tail; the radius, ulna, and h a n d bones of the
small arms; the first complete T. rex shoulder girdle ever found; possi-
ble stomach contents; a n d a spectacular skull that included a lower jaw
and a set of "dangerously serrated, dagger-like teeth." They speculated
that she might have weighed up to 6 tons. Sue showed evidence of hav-
ing indeed been the prizefighter of antiquity, the Larsons told the
Journal. Her head had been injured. O n e leg appeared to have been b r o -
ken and then healed. Vertebrae in her tail were fused. These battered
bones and her large size indicated that she had "led a long and perilous
life," Peter reported. He would later say that he was surprised that they
hadn't found a wheelchair buried beside her.
Larson found these injuries fascinating. "I'm interested in putting
'flesh' o n t o the skeleton," he says. "A fossil's pathology can give us a
snapshot of its day-to-day life." He pictured Sue, her huge leg broken,
resting in tall ferns, unable to move very far. This led to the question
H o w did she get enough food to survive until the leg healed? Larson pic-
tured a caring mate or clan m e m b e r s bringing her food.
T h e injuries to Sue's head suggested another series of snapshots. In
his self-published b o o k The Rex Files, Larson visualized a battle between
Sue (the Matriarch) a n d another female Tyrannosaurus rex for control
of the clan or territory:
T h e younger t h e r o p o d was not as strong or as large as her
adversary, but she was m o r e agile. The Matriarch was well sea-
soned for combat. She had repeatedly defended her position in
the g r o u p . . . . Her neck pulsed with pain as she wheeled on her
attacker. This injury, a bite received m o r e than ten years ago
from a pretender to the throne, had never healed, but continued
to ooze putrescence.
The quickness of the challenger, nearly 50 years the junior
of the two combatants, saved her from the savage attack as she
moved effortlessly to the right. With incredible speed, she
caught her elder off balance and attacked her from behind. The
N E V E R , E V E R F O R S A L E 2 9
younger Tyrannosaur sunk her serrated, dagger-like teeth into
the left side of her o p p o n e n t . Bone shattered behind the eye of
the Matriarch. A t r e m e n d o u s scream filled the air. . . . The
mighty ruler fell face d o w n in the stream as blood gushed from
the fatal w o u n d and mixed with the m u d d y w a t e r s . . . .
Slowly, ever so slowly, the stream covered this once mighty
body while organisms stripped the bones of its flesh. Sand,
leaves, and other bones accumulated a r o u n d and on top of the
skeleton. Within weeks the burial was complete.
Sue was always a female in Larson's snapshots a n d conversations.
"We'd given the T. rex that n a m e and always referred to it as 'she' or
'her,'" he says. "But even at the site, people were asking me, 'What if she's
a male?' I'd say that we could always point to that Johnny Cash song, 'A
Boy Named Sue.'"
Actually, Larson had little reason to believe that this T. rex was a girl
named Sue. At the time, most scientists, with the notable exception of
Ken Carpenter of the Denver M u s e u m of Natural History, had specu-
lated that the smaller, "gracile" T. rex were female, while the larger, m o r e
"robust" T. rex were male. And Sue was the largest, most robust T. rex
ever found. Further study of "her" b o n e s — a n d the bones of the
Museum of the Rockies' specimen, which appeared gracile—might
finally provide the answer to determining gender.
The bones might also answer another question that had long been
a source of spirited debate in the scientific c o m m u n i t y : Was the T. rex
primarily a predator or a scavenger? Years earlier, those in the scavenger
camp had argued that the T. rex was a fat, sluggish, cold-blooded crea-
ture, too slow to catch its prey a n d too big to sneak up on it. By the time
the Horner and Larson parties had excavated their dinosaurs in 1990,
however, most agreed that the long-legged T. rex possessed the speed to
run down its fellow dinosaurs. But what about its almost comically
short arms? Were these stubby appendages, only 3 feet long, strong
enough to grab a meal on the run?
Perhaps, said Carpenter and Matt Smith, a graduate student w h o
also worked at the Denver Museum. The January 1991 issue of Discover
magazine reported that the pair had measured a scar on the left fore-
limb of the H o r n e r T. rex where the tendon was attached to the biceps.
3 0 TYRANNOSAURUS S U E
"Given the size of the b o n e and the angle of the tendon attachment, and
estimating the mass of the muscle, they calculated that each of the ani-
mal's a r m s could have withstood a weight of 1200 pounds." This was
m o r e than enough to bring d o w n prey. "I don't know what a scavenger
would be doing with arms like that," Smith told the magazine.
Maybe making love. "I think it's too soon to say that the arms were
used to grasp prey," H o r n e r told Discover. "These arms are so short,
T. rex would have had to put its chest d o w n on the prey to stabilize it.
I'm not sure other dinosaurs would have been so slow and stupid as to