the side of the skull, cause he s really our best preparator. pete let me work on part of the skull in the field, which was amazing. he s working and uncovering the teeth one by one by one. it was spectacular. teeth like this just sticking right out of the skull. we re going, oh my god. look at this thing. look how huge it is. this has gotta be bigger than the one at the american museum. it s huge. it s wonderful. we had started a long time ago naming particular dinosaurs, and the name sue, for susan hendrickson, goes down in history, and i think that s a kind of a cool way to reward those amateurs who make these discoveries.
what does that white line mean, susan? we d been digging at the ruth mason quarry since 1979. the 1990 season, i think we were into the third month. we d been working north actually not working at the quarry itself anymore. we were actually prospecting and looking for fossils. we were looking for fossils on sharky williams and his brother maurice williams ranch and finding some pretty cool stuff, and we get up on august 12, look outside the tent, and it s foggy. it s kind of a weird thing to have fog on the prairie. so we got kind of a little bit later start. we weren t in any big hurry,
because you couldn t see very well, and then went out to start loading up the suburban. we have a 1975 suburban all rusted out. and i look, and the tire s flat. so i say, oh, crap. well, almost flat. still had a little bit of air in it. so i go in the back to get the spare tire, and the spare tire s flat, so i pull out the tire pump, and the tire pump hose is broken. so we figure, i guess we better head into town while we still have enough air in the tire to get there. we decided, well, we re gonna have to go to town. i d been out there for four of five weeks. going to town, that s okay. i can take it easy for half an hour, an hour. that s fine with me, but of course, susan, susan just can t handle that. you know, that s a waste of time, right? there was the flat tire. i was like, great. you guys go to town and don t need me. i ve got this place i want to look at. out there, you need landmarks to find your way around, and i said, okay, it s foggy. you can t see. make sure you
we got back after fixing the tire, and we were at the dig site. we were just finishing up doing stuff, and susan comes up. and she opens her hand, and she s got two pretty small pieces of bone, only about this big, in her hand. and i d never seen the inside of a t. rex vertebra before, but i knew exactly that was what she had in her hand, and i says, is there more of it? she said, there s a lot more. so we ran, literally ran back to the site. crawl up on the cliff face, and i see three articulated vertebrae, and from that point on, i m absolutely certain this is going to be the best thing we ever found and it s going to be a complete t. rex. he called up and said, neal, i need you to bring a lot of plaster two-by-fours. well, it took me a day to get everything ready, and i came up, and i got up there with all
circle. and, like, two hours later, i was right back where i started, and i could not believe it. i just couldn t believe it, cause i was, like, trying so hard to walk straight. it was like, i felt really stupid. believe it was the next day we went back with the video camera and just kind of reenacted, you know, how i found her. anybody who had any idea what a fossil versus a rock was would have seen it, cause there was a lot of broken bones dribbling down. about eight foot up the side of the cliff, there were three articulated vertebrae and a couple other pieces of bones sticking out. from the debris pile, i picked up scraps that showed the hollowness and took it with, cause i knew if i went back to where they were working, they wouldn t believe me. we got back after fixing the tire, and we were at the dig site. we were just finishing up doing stuff, and susan comes up. and she opens her hand, and