PHOTO OF THE WEEK: Sue

Yes, this is Sue, the largest Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever discovered. After the FBI had snatched the fossils from the commercial fossil hunters who found them, there was actually quite the battle over where Sue would wind up in the end. After a lengthly auction, the skeleton sold for about $8 million. To the Chicago Field Museum. I happened to be there on May 31st of this year (2014). Needless to say, I was ecstatic to see the fossil legend and quickly took about two dozen pictures of her bones. She looks big next to the folks standing around, and she is. At over 12 meters long (about 40 feet), she was larger than just about anything else in her environment. She could have eaten every one of those guys whole. Sue's bones are riddled with evidence of serious injuries that she lived with for a good portion of her life. It's evidence for an active, violent lifestyle for theropod dinosaurs, something I've posted on before. I'll be in Chicago again this coming weekend so maybe I'll have another chance to meet Sue then.