A Decade of Sue

I reckon there ain't nothin' more American than McDonald's and Disney tagteaming to buy a big-ass Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton for the Field Museum of Natural History. To make the story even more American, this occurred after the fossils' initial discovery on a ranch on an indian reservation by a private corporation and, once the landowner and the Sioux tribe each claimed ownership, subsequent seizure by the FBI. After a court battle, they were returned to the landowner, who auctioned them off.

Luckily, Sue ended up in the hands of the Field rather than a private collector with a nagging void in his foyer. Sue replaced the Albertasaurus mount in the Field's main hall. I was going to school in Chicago at the time and had a membership to the museum, which was within walking distance of my campus. I'd stop in once or twice a week, spending much of that time in Sue's shadow. I really miss having an easily accessible natural history museum in my life.

I'll need to make my way back up to Chicago soon to check out the spiffy, expensive new Sue exhibits, which you can preview at the Field's fancy-pants new site. Clicking on the "Celebrate Sue" link at the top of the page allows you to send Sue a birthday present. I sent a unicorn coloring book, which the site told me "was one of Sue's favorites." Honestly, I bet she would have preferred a goat tethered to a stake. In gratitude for your email address, you get access to four wallpapers and three "T. rex roar" ringtones.

The Chicago Tribune has written an article looking back on Sue's first ten years as a Chicago icon, as well as providing this video dating back to Sue's debut in 2000.



The beginning of this post is a remixed version of a Dino Friday post from Gentleman's Choice.

How Sue Died

Photo by mharrsch, via flickr

If you've seen Sue, you may have seen those holes on her jaw (as shown above) and wondered what caused them. While they superficially look like bite marks, they have been attributed to a bacterial infection called Actinomyces. But a new study led by Ewan D. S. Wolff of the University of Wisconsin and published by PLos ONE arrives at a new, intriguing conclusion: The holes are caused by a disease similar to one called Trichomonas which is found in modern birds.

This story has a couple of interesting aspects to me. First, it's another piece of circumstantial evidence linking dinosaurs and birds - the authors believe that the parasite that causes the disease may be an ancestor of the one that infects modern birds. Second, the authors note that it sheds further light into the behavior of the Tyrannosaur clan. From the paper:

Given the ways in which Trichomonas infection is spread among extant birds, the occurrence of a similar disease in tyrannosaurids suggests five possible scenarios for transmission: water-borne transmission, feeding of tainted prey to nestlings, consumption of infected prey, cannibalism, and snout to snout contact during face biting between adults or between infected adults and nestlings.

The authors strike water-borne transmission and tainted baby food straight away, because the fossil record doesn't allow us to explore these options - we've never found a tyrannosaur nest, and even if we did, it's possible that a baby would die well before such large lesions could develop. Consumption of infected prey is eliminated as well, as we've never found evidence of the infection in any of the species tyrannosaurids are known to have preyed upon.

This leaves two methods of transmission observable in the fossil record: snout to snout contact during face-biting and cannibalism. These are both known to be part of tyrannosaur lives; while the bite marks of smaller tyrannosaurids such as Daspletosaurus and Albertosaurus are harder to distinguish, those left by T. rex are unmistakable. And they left them on each other often. They appear to have been aggressive towards one another, using this face-biting behavior to spar over territory, mating rights, carrion or felled prey, or some other contentious aspect of tyrannosaur life. This behavior probably helped spread the disease.

Once infected, the Trichomonas-like parasite would have resided as a film in the tyrannosaur's throat. A badly infected, lesion-bearing individual, as Sue seems to have been, would find swallowing difficult, eventually falling to starvation.


Illustration by Chris Glen of The University of Queensland, via the PLoS ONE paper

Viva Rock Vegas

Escort service peddlers. Quickie marriages. Garish facsimiles of world landmarks. Samson the T. rex. As Neil Breen would say, "that's Vegas, baby." Samson, a very complete mounted specimen, is going up for auction at the Venetian on October 3.

Photo tooken from Vegas News for promotional purposes only. By Craig Cutler.

Phil Fraley Productions has some information about Samson's preparation. They also mounted Sue, which is an absolutely gorgeous mount. Chills me to stand beneath it. I really, really hope that they include a really long wig once he's mounted. It would be a funny bible joke. Too touchy a subject, maybe.

ALSO: this week, Siskoid's Blog of Geekery is featuring a post on dinosaurs everyday. Worth a gander, damn it!