Twenty-five years ago, Sue, the T. rex, made its debut at the Field Museum, with more than 10,000 people coming to see the 67-million-year-old fossil that has become a Chicago icon.
Saturday marked exactly 25 years since Sue made its first appearance at the Field Museum, and people visiting the museum are still in awe.
Kids posed in front of the skeleton and roared, imitating the noises they imagined Sue made while walking the planet millions of years ago.
Tori Bauer, visiting from St. Louis with her 4-year-old daughter Charlotte, said seeing Sue was the highlight of their trip.
“Charlotte loves reading books and was naturally drawn to dinosaur books specifically,” Bauer said. “She owns tons of dinosaur toys, and she likes learning every little bit about dinosaurs she can.”
Bauer said Charlotte was able to name most of the dinosaurs she and her mother passed at the museum on the way to see Sue.
Charlotte played with a squishy dinosaur toy while gazing in awe at the towering Sue skeleton.
“The T. rex is my favorite dinosaur,” Charlotte said. “It’s cool.”
Kath Miller, a dinosaur fan visiting Chicago from Long Beach, California, to celebrate her 23rd birthday, made the trip to the Field Museum especially to see Sue.
“I’m on the verge of tears,” Miller said. “It’s really amazing to see Sue because the skeleton is so complete. Sue is massive, and it’s really existential to think that it once walked this Earth.”
Miller slowly circled the 13-foot dinosaur, taking it in from every angle.
“It’s the little things that really fascinate me,” she said. “The fact that her ribs are broken on the side, you can see some cartilage buildup. And the skull has little holes they say were probably caused by a parasitic infection.”
With evidence of infection, cracked ribs and arthritis, Sue probably died of natural causes at 29 years old but would have been a physical “train wreck,” Gregory Erickson of Florida State University, a Field Museum associate, told the Chicago Sun-Times in 2004.
After debuting in the museum’s Stanley Field Hall, Sue was moved to her now-permanent digs in the Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet in 2018.
Joshua and Caitlin Sterling, who came Saturday from Indiana, were excited to see Sue again after having first seen the fossil years ago when it was brought to the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.
“It was really interesting to see Sue 20-something years ago, but, now that I’m older, I feel like I appreciate it even more,” Caitlin Sterling said.
Joshua Sterling said the reunion with Sue made him feel nostalgic and gave him a deeper appreciation for the dinosaur’s iconic status.
“She’s become a staple because of her story,” he said, “the way she’s deteriorated over time but still remains strong.
Sue is the most complete adult Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton that’s been found, with 250 of the creature’s approximately 380 bones. Though the skeleton was dubbed Sue, for discoverer Sue Hendrickson, who discovered it in South Dakota in 1990, it isn’t known whether it was female or male.
Hendrickson discovered the dinosaur when she was hiking with her golden retriever Gypsy on a “hunch” that “there might be something in an exposed cliff” she spotted on a hot, foggy day, she told the Sun-Times last year.
William Simpson, head of geology at the Field Museum, was part of the team that helped obtain Sue.
“When it was announced that it was going to a public museum, it was really the best of all worlds because not only would the public get to see it but vertebrate paleontologists all over the world would come and study it,” Simpson said.
To honor Sue’s 25th anniversary in Chicago, the Field Museum is holding a host of events, kicking off with Dinopalooza on June 7, featuring a “Dino Derby” in which kids can race around the museum’s North Lawn in dinosaur costumes.
Other events happening throughout the Summer of Sue include a dinosaur-themed PlayLab Storytime; a meet-and-greet with scientists, researchers and museum collections managers; and a Sue-themed dance party.
Contributing: Araceli Gómez-Aldana