meet Sue

I'm no scientist or anything, my sister certainly got those genes. But when I was kid, I loved dinosaurs. I loved watching shows about them, loved little toys of them, loved wearing tshirts with dinosaurs on them. Loved them.


<-- This is Sue.

I met her yesterday for the first time at the Field Museum in Chicago. She is the largest, most complete, and best preserved TRex to be discovered thus far. She's huge. 13 feet from floor to hip, and 42 feet long. Her skull (which is too heavy to sit on the skeleton but is on display upstairs) is 5 feet long and weighs 600 pounds. She was found in South Dakota. Can you imagine creatures like this roaming across northwestern America?

Not only was Sue cool to look at (and I think she's even kind of cute... looks like she's smiling) but there were also videos playing about her discovery, construction, study of her, etc. It was cool to watch how theories and things that we know about the TRex have changed over the last 100 years, and even over the last 15 years since Sue was found. I'm so fascinated by the fact that scientists can study this skeleton and learn things about how this creature used it's senses, how it moved and hunted, how it lived and died. And I'm fascinated by the theory that birds are living dinosaurs. They have similar bone structures, and their feet are the same.

Ok, enough of my sharing intelligent scientific thoughts and meanderings for the day. But really, if you like dinosaurs go visit Sue. Or at least Sue's website at the Field Museum site, cause she's cool and really (for lack of a better word to describe how I feel about her) fascinating.