Pete wants it this way. he wants this specimen available to everybody. it was so beautiful. just the preservation was incredible. it was just, wow. everybody knew about sue. we hadn t made any secret of the fact that we d collected her. we had 2,000 visitors sign this little guest book that went way in the back in our warehouse to see the skull of sue. i was just totally flaber gasted when i saw the specimen. first of all, the size is just so imposing. but what i was more amazed by was what a great job they were doing preparing the specimen. i d heard inklings that the black hills institute boys had found something. one of the first things i saw was actually, you know, part of the skull of sue still encased in matrix. 65 million years later, this animal really had the power to give you goose bumps. to see the look on pete s face and neil s, those guys were just like proud papas. they would inform you. they would go do classes at school for the kids, so it was very education
The antiquities act to remove antiquities from united states lands without the permission of the united states. the federal government doesn t show up with the national guard and an assistant, or pardon me, an acting united states attorney in pancake make-up with the intention of working things out somewhere down the road. after we got over the initial shock, those of us who were packing the dinosaur kind of went into our packing mode, but towards the end of the day, it became obvious that something was going on with the town. people around town noticed. they noticed all the cop cars. they noticed the police tape. all a sudden, there were people with signs out in front of our building it was clear that people were not happy with what was going on. the protest developed very quickly, so there were a lot of people on the street. i was working for national geographic, and we were gonna take the skull of sue and put it into a cat scan of what they use for the space shuttles t
all a sudden, there were people with signs out in front of our building. it was clear that people were not happy with what was going on. the protests developed very quickly, so there were a lot of people on the street. i was working for national geographic, and we were gonna take the skull of sue and put it into a cat scan of what they use for the space shuttles to see if we could see inside the skull of sue. and terry wentz answered the phone, and he said, well, i don t think so, so i got on the next plane i could, and the place was surrounded by cops. i mean, you thought that there was like a real t-rex loose on the property. the next day in they brought reinforcements, a lot more people. the idea was that we were going to load this stuff up and haul it somewhere. and when the director of military support, one of the colonels got down there, he called and said, hey, general, this is not what we expected. this is a media event. we got schoolkids out here. we got parents o
Building, doing preparation. just leave me alone, right? but everybody was in there. there would be schoolkids in there. or another day, there d be, you know, some scientist guys coming along in there. i mean, pete had, like, 30 scientists working on a major new monograph on tyrannosaurus rex, so you got to suck it up. pete wants it this way. he wants this specimen available to everybody. it was so beautiful. just the preservation was incredible. it was just, wow. everybody knew about sue. we hadn t made any secret of the fact that we d collected her. we had 2,000 visitors sign this little guest book that went way in the back in our warehouse to see the skull of sue. i was just totally flabbergasted when i saw the specimen. first of all, the size is just so imposing. but what i was more amazed by was what a great job they were doing preparing the specimen. i d heard inklings that the black hills institute boys had found something. one of the first things i saw was actually, you
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.