Sue the T. Rex Was Found Because of a Flat Tire

SUE, the Tyrannosaurus rex at Chicago's Field Museum, was found because a fossil crew's truck got a flat tire. While the others drove into town for the repair, one woman went walking with her dog and spotted the bones.

A Flat Tire and a Free Afternoon

In the summer of 1990, a team from the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research was hunting fossils on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, north of the small town of Faith, South Dakota.

On August 12, 1990, the crew found a flat tire on their truck. Most of the group headed into town to get it repaired.

Fossil hunter Sue Hendrickson stayed behind. She decided to explore the nearby cliffs that the team had not yet checked.

She set out with her golden retriever and hiked for hours in foggy conditions.

Three Bones Eight Feet Up

Hendrickson reached a 60-foot-high bluff and scanned the ground. At its base she found small pieces of bone.

Then she looked up. About eight feet above her, three massive bones were jutting out of the rock face.

She showed the bones to Peter Larson, the president of the Black Hills Institute, who recognized the bones as Tyrannosaurus rex.

Digging it out was slow, careful work. According to the Field Museum, it took six people 17 days to extract the dinosaur's bones from the ground.

A Record Skeleton

The skeleton turned out to be one of the most complete T. rex specimens ever found. The Field Museum puts it at around 90 percent complete by bulk, with about 250 of the T. rex's known bones recovered.

SUE measures more than 40 feet long and 13 feet tall at the hip. Scientists estimate the animal was somewhere between 27 and 33 years old when it died.

The dinosaur was named for the woman who found it. One thing nobody knows is whether the animal itself was male or female - the Field Museum says SUE's sex is unknown.

Where SUE Stands Today

The Field Museum in Chicago unveiled SUE on May 17, 2000, in the museum's main hall.

When the Field Museum first unveiled the skeleton, more than 10,000 people showed up that day.

SUE stood in that hall for 18 years. In 2018, the museum took the skeleton apart and moved it to its own gallery in the Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet. SUE's new suite opened to visitors on December 21, 2018.

Visitors can still stand beneath the skeleton in Chicago today. It carries the name of the fossil hunter who walked off with her dog while everyone else went to fix a tire.