27/03/2026
HER NAME WAS SUE — AND SHE STARTED A WAR"
On August 12, 1990, a fossil hunter named Sue Hendrickson noticed something strange.
Three massive vertebrae, weathering out of a cliff face in the badlands of Faith, South Dakota. Her team — led by the commercial fossil company Black Hills Institute — had a flat tire that day. Everyone else went to town. Sue went walking.
What she found was the largest, most complete, and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever discovered. Over 90% complete. 67 million years old. 42 feet long. A predator so perfectly preserved that scientists could read her life story in her bones:
— She had suffered broken ribs that healed.
— Her left fibula showed signs of a massive infection.
— Holes in her jaw revealed a parasitic disease (trichomonosis) that may have slowly starved her to death.
— She had survived battles with other tyrannosaurs — bite marks on her skull from jaws as powerful as her own.
She was a survivor. A warrior. A queen who had endured a brutal life and died hard after approximately 28 years — ancient for a T. rex.
They named her SUE, after her discoverer.
𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝗿 𝗯𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗻.
Who owned Sue? The fossil hunter who found her? The landowner (Maurice Williams, a Cheyenne River Sioux rancher)? The federal government, since the land was held in trust? The Black Hills Institute, which had paid $5,000 for excavation rights?
In 1992, the FBI and National Guard seized Sue in a dramatic raid — armed agents, flatbed trucks, the works. Peter Larson of the Black Hills Institute was eventually convicted of customs violations and spent 18 months in federal prison. Not for stealing Sue, but for unrelated fossil-export charges dredged up during the investigation.
Sue went to court. Literally. The fossil was the subject of one of the most complex property disputes in American legal history.
In 1997, Sue was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York.
The hammer fell at $8.36 million — the highest price ever paid for a fossil. The buyer: The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, backed by McDonald's Corporation and Walt Disney Parks.
Today, Sue stands in a custom-built gallery at the Field Museum, seen by over 2 million visitors per year. Her real skull — too heavy for the mounted skeleton — is displayed separately on the second floor, where visitors can look directly into those empty eye sockets and feel the weight of 67 million years looking back.
Sue Hendrickson, the woman, received no portion of the $8.36 million.
She continued hunting fossils. She dove for ancient shipwrecks. She searched for amber in the Dominican Republic. She never stopped exploring.
"I don't need the money," she once said. "I found a T. rex. That's enough."
📍 Discovery: Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, near Faith, South Dakota, USA
📅 Year: 1990
🦴 Specimen: FMNH PR 2081 "Sue" — most complete T. rex skeleton ever found (over 90% complete, 250+ bones)
🔬 Significance: Most complete and best-preserved T. rex; sparked landmark legal battles over fossil ownership; most expensive fossil ever sold at auction
🪶 𝘙𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘴 & 𝘓𝘦𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴 — 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘦𝘵𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘦𝘱 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦.
👑 A queen. A war. $8.36 million. And a woman who said finding her was enough. Save this.
