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 The Science of Sue
The science of “SUE”: what we have learned from a nearly complete T. rex skeleton.
By Peter Makovicky, Ph.D., Curator of Dinosaurs, Department of Geology, The Field Museum
Since her unveiling five years ago, SUE has become an icon of The Field Museum and Chicago as well as one of the most widely recognized representatives of its species. While fulfilling these “ambassadorial” roles, however, this dinosaur also represents a significant research specimen due to its exceptional preservation and impressive size. Although a century has passed since Henry Fairfield Osborn coined the name Tyrannosaurus rex for a gigantic carnivore skeleton discovered by legendary dinosaur paleontologist Barnum Brown in 1902, none of the almost thirty other specimens found so far approach either the dimensions or the completeness of SUE. Furthermore, SUE’s bones are so well preserved that we have recently been able to map out its leg musculature based on the attachment scars that muscles left on its bones, and even tell SUE’s age from cross-sections of various bones in its skeleton. This information has provided some startling new insights into the biology of tyrannosaurids and opened a new chapter in the study of these animals.
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