Jurassic Park

Found on South Dakota property owned by a rancher who was part Sioux, the dinosaur was at the center of a huge legal battle. The issue? Who owned the creature? In the end, the court found the United States government held the land in trust for the rancher. He, in turn,  auctioned Sue to the highest bidder - the Field Museum and its partners.  At the time, it was the most money ever paid for a fossil: nearly $8.4 million.

Sue’s 5-foot skull is enormous and heavy.  It cannot be displayed with the rest of the skeleton. Instead, a replica sits atop the dinosaur’s fossilized bones while the skull itself is encased, with teeth in place, inside a special glass container. Some of Sue’s teeth are more than a foot long!

Although the brain of this massive dinosaur was not fossilized, its braincase was in remarkably good shape. Scientists have determined Sue’s brain was about a foot (or 30.5 centimeters) long. Scans of Sue’s skull, taken by Boeing’s computerized tomography machine, have allowed scientists to create a digitized version. (Follow this link to see it.)

Sue (whose sex cannot be determined) has given scientists much more knowledge than they previously had regarding the fearsome T-Rex. But no one can tell why Sue died.