Transcripts for CNN Dinosaur 13 20141221 02:45:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
absolutely fascinating. and of course the centerpiece of it all was that astonishing skull. absolutely amazing. kristin and stan adelstein are there. they re going try to buy the bien staur f dinosaur for us. and terry wentz is there. the guy who fought for this dinosaur forever. susan hendricks is there. everybody s anticipating this auction. and i m thinking, we have a chance, we have a chance. sotheby s had arranged for one of the people who normally would be taking bids to give me a running detail on the telephone about what was happening at the auction. i was at the institute too. i could not bear to listen to the phone. it was too much. [ gavel ] good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to sotheby s. so,as my personal financial psychic,
town had. it was our dinosaur. it was our museum. it was our lives that had been just torn to pieces. i was in france, and they called me, and, you know, i thought it was a joke. couldn t believe it, and i cried. i was highly emotional, but from that moment that i heard that the specimen was going to be taken, my focus was on the specimen. legally and all that other crap, that s not my concern. my concern was make sure that dinosaur was going to transport, everything was going to be safe. sue belonged here, and what happened was not right.
it was precious. it was sweet. she was his person. and later, i would realize, she was more of his person than any other person has ever been and ever will be. i got to say, that dinosaur and pete larson were made for each other. and so he had to go talk to her. and that was what how it should be. mostly, i was trying to reassure her that she wasn t going to rot in that case, that i was going to spring her free. somehow, i was going to get her out of there.
suit. you know, we sued the federal government for return of our property. the black hills institute said it purchased the fossil from maurice williams. originally maurice williams said that too, but then he changed his claim, and he said he had not sold the fossil and that he owned it. mr. williams. pete and neal had made a deal with maurice williams for $5,000. on that saturday, the day before we finished getting sue out of the ground, that we gave maurice williams a check for $5,000, that said for theropod sue on the bottom of the check. even though $5,000 may not seem like a lot, it was a lot of money for our company to spend, and no one had ever paid that much for an undiscovered fossil before. we had lots of conversations with maurice williams about what was happening to the dinosaur. he knew that we were going to bring it back to hill city. he was completely in favor of that. he knew about the museum we were building. he knew we were going to be