Two heavyweights from different eras combine in the Field’s newest exhibition: Pokémon Fossil Museum

You could almost see a tear trickle from Sue’s craggy eye socket and, in a croaky roar, hear the 67-million-year-old T. rex say: “Am I not enough?”

Perhaps not in this era.

The Field Museum’s superstar — along with a sampling of other ancient life forms — is being paired with a celebrity behemoth born in the late 20th Century: Pokémon.

Pokémon Fossil Museum opened Thursday and runs through April 2027. It is a collaboration between the Field, the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo and The Pokémon Company International. Pokémon was started in Japan in 1996 and features fantastical creatures that have appeared in an animated series, in Nintendo video games and on wildly popular trading cards.

In the Field exhibit, oddly pristine “fossil” creations from the fantastical Pokémon universe sit next to the Field’s crustier equivalents (in this case, a cast of Sue’s famous fossil skull).

“The link between so many of the Pokémon and our specimens is so exact. Archeops is the Pokémon character, whereas archaeopteryx is probably, after Sue, our most famous fossil because it’s the link between birds and dinosaurs,” said Julian Siggers, the Field Museum’s president and CEO.

I kept expecting Siggers’ British upper lip to soften into a teasing grin as he spoke about the new exhibition. But he never broke character Thursday.

He said he sees the Pokémon fossils as a way to draw in budding, young scientists.

“It’s a great way to work with Pokémon to get people really interested in paleontology. And in many ways, dinosaurs are the gateway to science,” Siggers said.

In Pokémon Fossil Museum, the Field has certainly succeeded in getting people through the gateway. The Field’s website was temporarily overwhelmed back in March when delirious fans tried to book tickets for the show.

I brought along my Pokémon-obsessed youngest son, Matteo, who is 8, to get his take.

The exhibition is conveniently color-coded — blue for information about Pokémon, red for real-world fossils. Your guides: actual Field scientists depicted as cartoon-like caricatures, in addition to “Professor Wollemi, Pokémon World Fossil Researcher, and Excavator Pikachu.”

You’ll learn, if you didn’t already know, that there are 11 known types of Pokémon fossils and that the creatures themselves are of “all shapes and sizes with powerful but controllable capabilities. People and Pokémon live alongside each other — playing, working, and taking on adventures and challenges together.”

The exhibition features cute faux fossils of the Pokémon, but my kid showed only passing interest in these.

“They do look like fossils of the actual Pokémon. They look smoother than the real fossils. They are more intact. They aren’t scratched up,” Matteo said.

Which is a problem, isn’t it, if a fossil has spent eons embedded in the Earth’s crust?

Matteo was more intrigued by the opportunity to peer at the tools folks like Field Chief Fossil Preparator Akiko Shinya use to scrape away tiny rock particles from real fossils.

But he might not have been in the majority Thursday. Several of the kids the Chicago Sun-Times spoke to were mightily impressed by the exhibit.

“Pretty much five stars,” said Lincoln Frame, 11, of Valparaiso, Indiana.

One problem with a Pokémon-themed exhibit that comes with its own gift shop is that, well, it comes with its own gift shop.

So even if the exhibit were to present a Pokémon Tyrantrum vs. T. rex fight to the death (it doesn’t), the grade-school urge to possess Pokémon toys and possess them now is hard to suppress.

“I’m looking forward to the Pokémon shop and to eating because I’m hungry,” Matteo said several times Thursday.

Pokémon Fossil Museum runs through April 11. Tickets for Pokémon tickets on weekdays are $18 for adults and $13 for kids; on weekends, tickets are $20 for adults and $14 for kids. For more information, go to fieldmuseum.org.