Oak Park Newspaper

Come meet the fossil hunter who discovered SUE the T. rex – hear her stories and get her autograph. Sue Hendrickson will be at The Field Museum Memorial Day weekend!

We loved the Tyrannosaur puppet and the tremendous sound effects that came with it, and so did the kids. The movie which followed is one of the best 3D films made, with great narration, a wonderful script, great cgi computer effects, and a lot of fun to experience, thanks to Don Kempf and his company.

The animated, life sized dinosaurs on the first floor were fun and entertaining, the children and adults had a grand time interacting with the large beasts of the past.

President and Founder of D3D Cinema, Don Kempf; his mother, Nancy Kempf, and Member of the Woman's Board of the Field Museum; Three Time Academy Award Nominee, Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play, and Actress at Steppenwolf in Chicago, Joan Allen; and last but not least the President and CEO of the Field Museum of Chicago, John McCarter.

Joan Allen a star of film and stage has another star in her galaxy of awards, and this one is for her talented narration of the film produced by Don Kempf. The film is beautifully created with a host of talent in the arts and computers. The script is educational and exciting. This perhaps the first 3D film that we have seen that is in your face with obvious jolts of 3D reality. Don Kempf said that he did not want any of that in the film. They at one point had a dinosaur kick some dirt or something toward the audience but that detracted from the value of the film and it was deleted. Mr. Kempf was educated at the University of Chicago in their business college and has produced some extraordinary film in the IMAX realm, some shown at the Museum of Science and Industry. John McCarter was very pleased with the efforts of Don Kempf's company and is looking forward to many more of his efforts at the museum.

These are all life sized creations controlled by face recognition software similar to programs used in many new digital cameras, and that software will have these denizens of past perusing your every move. The kids loved it......

Come meet the fossil hunter who discovered SUE the T. rex – hear her stories and get her autograph. Sue Hendrickson will be at The Field Museum Memorial Day weekend!

Everyone knows that The Field Museum is Chicago's place to see dinosaurs, but this summer one dinosaur gets extra special attention – the Museum is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the unveiling of SUE, the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex in the world and a Chicago icon.

Beginning Wednesday May 26, 2010, SUE will “escape” into other parts of the Museum. Of course, she’ll still be on display in the Museum’s Stanley Field Hall, where she has delighted more than 16 million visitors in the last decade, but she’ll also be featured in a new package of fun dinosaur experiences for the whole family.

Just steps from the exhibition of SUE’s real skeleton, visitors can now enter a prehistoric world: RoboSUE: The T. rex Experience is a journey back in time where visitors will encounter a super-realistic robotic SUE who responds to humans by looking directly at them and reacting to their movements. Along this thrilling journey, visitors will discover other robotic dinosaurs including hungry Velicoraptors and a Triceratops guarding her nest.

In addition, The Field Museum will also premier Waking the T. rex: The Story of SUE. The movie, shown in the Museum’s new 3-D theater, brings you face-to-face with T. rex and shows what researchers have learned about SUE. The amazing 3-D images are sure to add a new "dimension" to visitors' knowledge of dinosaurs!

Memorial Day weekend activities (May 29-31) will include special appearances by Sue Hendrickson, the fossil hunter who found the T. rex named in her honor. She will autograph photos and answer visitors’ questions about her spectacular discovery.

If you’ve never seen SUE – now is the time. If you saw her years ago, come back and share the experience with friends and family.

Visit fieldmuseum.org for more information and updates about other special activities and programs as we celebrate SUE’s 10^th anniversary.

SUE at The Field Museum is made possible by McDonald’s Corporation. A major sponsor of SUE is Walt Disney World Resort. Additional support has been provided by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources/Illinois State Museum. The Elizabeth Morse Charitable Trust is the generous sponsor of this exhibition.

RoboSUE: The T. rex Experience was created by The Field Museum, in collaboration with KumoTek Robotics, INC and Kokoro Company LTD. This experience is sponsored by Kenneth and Anne Griffin.

D3D Cinema and The Field Museum present Waking the T. rex 3-D: The Story of SUE, sponsored by McDonald’s Corporation.

Admission
Tickets to all SUE experiences are included in The Field Museum’s All Access Pass and cost $29 for adults, $24 for seniors/students, and $20 for children ages 3-11. Discounts are available for Chicago residents. Visit fieldmuseum.org or call 866.FIELD.03. Special rates are available for tour operators and groups of 15 or more. Call our Group Sales office toll-free at 888.FIELD.85 (888.343.5385).

Location and Travel Information
The Field Museum is located at 1400 S. Lake Shore Drive, on CTA bus lines #6 and #146, and close to the Metra electric and South Shore train lines. An indoor parking garage is located just steps from the main entrance. For more travel information, call the Illinois Department of Transportation, 312.368.4636, or the RTA Travel Center Hotline, 312.836.7000.

SUE – The World’s Largest, Most Complete and Best Preserved Tyrannosaurus rex

No dinosaur in the world compares to SUE – the largest, most complete, and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex ever found. The Field Museum unveiled her 67 million-year-old fossil skeleton in May, 2000 and since then more than 16 million visitors have marveled at Chicago’s prehistoric giant. In addition, more than six million people – from Alaska to Dubai – have seen the special traveling exhibition, A T. rex Named SUE, which features a full-size cast model of the dinosaur and many hands-on activities.

SUE’s sex is unknown (she’s named after Sue Hendrickson, the fossil hunter who discovered her in South Dakota in 1990). But there’s much we do know: Over 90 percent of her bones were found – it’s very unusual for a fossil to be so complete. This proves that after she died (probably by a riverbank), she was quickly covered in mud before scavengers could reach her or weather could erode her. SUE’s skeleton reveals important information about her life. Her massive frame supported a body that weighed nearly seven tons. Wounds on her bones that were first thought to be bite marks and battle scars were later discovered to be lesions probably caused by infections. By counting the rings in SUE’s bones – much like counting rings in tree stumps – scientists discovered that she grew rapidly during adolescence and was 28 years old when she died – the upper range of T. rex life expectancy.

Researchers performed a CAT scan on SUE’s skull and discovered that T. rex sense of smell was especially keen. Although her brain was just large enough to hold a quart of liquid, the two olfactory lobes in her skull (used to detect and interpret smell) <>were about the size of grapefruits! That sense of smell was essential for finding food, and sharp, serrated teeth – some measuring one foot in length – were the steak knives she used for slicing through meat. But we don’t know for sure if T. rex was a hunter or a scavenger, or both.

The Field Museum acquired SUE at an auction in New York in 1997 for a record total price of $8.36 million (that’s still the largest amount ever paid for a fossil.) The following year, the Museum built the glass-enclosed McDonald’s Fossil Preparation

Laboratory – a state-of-the-art facility for cleaning and restoring SUE’s bones. Paleontologists painstakingly cleaned her bones with tools not unlike those used by dentists to clean teeth. Twenty-five thousand hours* were spent on this delicate process – 3,500 hours on the skull alone (*that equates to one person working 15 years full-time!) Scientists removed almost three-tons of rock and debris for more than two years to get SUE ready for display! Since then, scientists continue to clean and prepare other fossils in the laboratory, and Museum visitors enjoy watching them work.

Today, SUE stands in the Museum’s Stanley Field Hall. Complementing the exhibition of SUE is the 27,000-square-foot exhibition, Evolving Planet. Completed in 2006, Evolving Planet is considered to be one of the world’s most engaging and thorough exhibitions about the four-billion-year history of life on Earth. Within Evolving Planet, The Genius Hall of Dinosaurs gives Field Museum visitors a look at major groups of dinosaurs and tells about the world in which they lived.

SUE represents The Field Museum’s leadership in paleontology. Since the Museum’s founding in 1893, its scientists have made many breakthroughs in understanding the history of life on Earth. Here are 10 recent discoveries by Museum paleontologists:

The evolution of Tyrannosaurus rex’s giant size is one of the most fascinating aspects of dinosaurs. The Field Museum announced a study in that demonstrated growth patterns of T. rex and three other species of tyrannosaur also revealed how old The Field Museum’s T. rex SUE was when she died.

The Museum’s Curator of Dinosaurs Peter Makovicky and his colleague, Gregory Erickson of Florida State University made these breakthroughs by studying paper thin cross sections of tyrannosaur bones from twenty different specimens and counting the growth rings in them (much like counting rings in tree stumps.) They calculated the corresponding body size from circumference measurements of the animal’s femur (large leg bone). By correlating these two sets of data they determined the growth curve. It has long been known that large weight-bearing dinosaur bones display growth lines, but they are hard to read because the bones’ marrow cavities expand and change shape as they grow, erasing some of the internal lines. This study, however, focused on smaller bones, including ribs and fibulas. These bones do not develop hollow cavities or remodel as they grow, so growth lines are clear when viewed under a microscope.

The researchers discovered that during the peak of its growth spurt, T. rex gained almost five pounds a day! The major growth spurt happened when the animal was 14-18 years old – a growth pattern that closely resembles that of human teenagers. By contrast other tyrannosaurs, grew only 15-25% as fast as T. rex.

The two scientists also determined that SUE lived to be 28 years old. While this may seem young by human standards, Sue was by far the oldest animal in the study. Because SUE’s skeleton shows signs of aging such as arthritis, and given the number of injuries and pathologies she suffered, scientists think that she was pretty close to the maximum age for her species.

With hard, bony shells to shelter and protect, turtles are unique and have long posed a mystery to scientists who wondered how such an elegant body structure came to be. Thanks to the work of a Field Museum scientist, we now have a clearer picture of how the turtle got its shell.

Working with colleagues in China and Canada, Field Museum paleontologist Olivier Rieppel analyzed the world’s oldest turtle fossil, estimated to be 220 million years old. The ancient turtle, found in China, was dubbed Odontochelys semitestacea. Significant to scientists was the fact that Odontochelys has only a partial shell – making it an intermediate example of the evolutionary process. (A translation of the animal’s Latin name is “half-shelled turtle with teeth.”)

By studying Odontochelys, the team of scientists found evidence to support the notion that turtle shells are bony extensions of their backbones and ribs that expanded and grew together to form a hard, protective covering. They published their findings in 2008. Prior to this discovery, some researchers theorized that turtle shells started as bony plates called osteoderms, which eventually fused to form a hard shell. Some of today’s reptiles such as crocodiles have skin with bony plates and this was also seen in dinosaurs.

But the ancient turtle fossil has no osteoderms! Its partial shell extends from its backbone and it also shows a widening of ribs, leading scientists to believe this extension and widening of bones is how the turtle shell evolved.

The fossil did have a fully formed plastron – complete protection of its underside – just as turtles do today. This suggests that Odontochelys was a water-dweller whose swimming exposed its underside to predators.

In the Late Paleozoic (260 million years ago), long before dinosaurs dominated the Earth, ancient precursors to mammals took to the trees to feed on leaves and live high above predators that prowled the land. The elongated fingers, opposable “thumb,” and grasping tail of Suminia getmanovi demonstrate that this small plant-eater was the earliest known tree-climbing vertebrate (animal with a backbone).

Field Museum paleontologist Jörg Fröbisch and Robert Reisz of the University of Toronto published this breakthrough discovery in 2009. Their finding places vertebrates in trees far earlier than scientists previously thought.

Dr. Fröbisch studied several skulls and more than a dozen exceptionally well preserved, complete Suminia skeletons embedded in a single large block of red mudstone from central Russia. It’s rare to find fossils of several animals in a single block of stone and he was able to see examples of virtually every bone in Suminia’s body.

The animal was relatively small, about 20 inches from its nose to the tip of its tail. The tree-climbing lifestyle of this Paleozoic relative of mammals is particularly important. For the first time, a vertebrate had access to new food resources high off the ground and also protection from ground-dwelling predators.

The study also provides the first evidence in the fossil record of food partitioning between small climbing and large ground-dwelling plant-eaters. Earlier terrestrial vertebrate communities did not have this hierarchy, but instead were composed of various-sized predators and relatively few plant-eaters.

During the summers of 2006 and 2007, an international team of researchers from China and the United States, including The Field Museum’s Curator of Dinosaurs Peter Makovicky, excavated a treasure trove of dinosaur skeletons in the Gobi Desert in China. Two of their discoveries represented new species of theropod dinosaurs.

One was an early relative of T. rex named Xiongguanlong baimoensis (shong-GWAN-long by-mo-En-sis) that would have stood about five feet tall at the hip and weighted close to 600 pounds. (Sue, The Field Museum’s famous T. rex, is 14 feet tall at the hips and weighed between six and seven tons.)

Xiongguanlong represents a “missing link” in the fossil record of tyrannosaur dinosaurs. Large tyrannosaurs, like T. rex, lived at the end of the age of dinosaurs and have been known to science for over 100 years. Until recently, there was a huge gap between early and late chapters of tyrannosaur history. Xiongguanlong is significant because it sheds light on the missing 40 to 50 million years of tyrannosaur evolution. The team of scientists working in China also discovered a remarkable theropod named Beishanlong grandis (bay-SHAN-long gran-DIS). It is a new species of ornithomimosaur, or ostrich-mimic dinosaur. With an estimated body mass of almost 1,400 pounds, Beishanlong is one of the largest ornithomimosaurs yet described. By studying growth rings in the animal’s bones, scientists determined it was not yet fully grown when it died at age 14. In the future, scientists might find an even larger, adult specimen!

Beishanlong was equipped with hand claws up to six inches in length and powerful forelimbs that could not be elevated much but may have been used for digging or raking the ground. Although the skull was not preserved, Beishanlong likely had a beak like other ostrich-mimic dinosaurs, and may have been herbivorous, despite its meat-eating origins.

In 2000, Field Museum paleontologist Olivier Rieppel studied a new species of an ancient snake with well-developed hind limbs. The new snake, named Haasiophis terrasanctus, was the second limbed snake to come from an area in the Middle East which millions of years ago had an environment similar to a reef in the Bahamas.

By studying the well preserved 95-million-year-old fossil, Dr. Rieppel and his colleagues determined that this new species and the previously discovered limbed snake were close relatives. The team found that these animals were not primitive ancestors of today’s snakes but were similar to modern boas and pythons, with jaws that could be nearly unhinged to allow feeding on prey larger than the diameter of their own heads.

But an important question remains unanswered: Why do these two ancient snake species have stubby hind limbs? Dr. Rieppel notes, “Since our fossil record of snakes is very poor, we can’t exclude the possibility that limbs in snakes were lost not just once in the beginning of their evolution, but several times throughout their history.” The legs seen in the two species of fossil snakes are too small in relation to their whole bodies to provide locomotion. Interestingly, modern pythons have a rudimentary hindlimb which males use during mating. It’s possible that these ancient snakes used their legs in a similar way.

In 2004, a team of Argentine and American paleontologists including Peter Makovicky, curator of dinosaurs at The Field Museum, discovered a 90-million-year-old dinosaur about 700 miles southwest of Buenos Aires in the Patagonia region of Argentina. The new dinosaur, named Buitreraptor gonzalezorum belongs to a group of swift-running, birdlike dinosaurs called dromaeosaurs (the group includes Velociraptor). The new find was significant because it demonstrated that dromaeosaurs originated much earlier than previously thought.

During the Late and Middle Jurassic, the Earth’s one giant supercontinent split into two land masses. Laurasia, composed of what today is North America, Asia, and Europe, drifted north; Gondwana, composed of today’s Southern Hemisphere and India, drifted south. Until recently, dromaeosaur fossils had been found only in the rocks of Asia and North America. Buitreraptor (bwee-tree-rap-tor) provided the first definitive evidence that dromaeosaurs also lived in South America. Scientists concluded that this group of dinosaurs must have originated during the time when all the continents were assembled in a single land mass – as far back as 180 million years ago.

Buitreraptor has birdlike features – a huge, hollow wishbone, long, wing-like forelimbs, and a bird-like pelvis – that provide more evidence linking dinosaurs to birds. It’s about the size of a very large rooster, but with a long head and very long tail. With adaptations such as a long, slender snout and small, widely-spaced teeth, Buitreraptor may have hunted small prey, such as snakes, mammals, and lizards.

A team of paleontologists including Nate Smith, a graduate student working for The Field Museum, discovered fossils at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico that provided evidence showing dinosaurs and their ancestors coexisted for 15–20 million years or more. Previously, scientists thought that dinosaur precursors disappeared long before dinosaurs appeared, possibly because they were out-competed for resources. The team published its findings in the journal Science in 2007.

The fossils found at Ghost Ranch (a place made famous through the paintings of Georgia O’Keefe) provided paleontologists significant new information about the evolution of dinosaur precursors, their transition into true dinosaurs, and how dinosaurs diversified.

Dinosaurs and many other animals including mammals, lizards, crocodiles, turtles, and frogs, arose in the Late Triassic (235-200 million years ago) but it was only after the end–Triassic mass extinction (200 million years ago) that dinosaurs dominated the planet and all their predecessors vanished.

The team working in New Mexico found fossils of both early dinosaurs and dinosaur precursors, as well as bones of crocodile relatives, fish, and amphibians, all dating around 215 million years ago. These included a new species of small dinosaur precursor the team named Dromomeron romeri in 2007, and a new species of meat-eating dinosaur the team named Tawa hallae in a paper in Science in 2009. One of the additional dinosaur precursors found was a relatively large plant-eater that was quadrupedal (walked on four feet). Until recently, scientists thought all dinosaur precursors were probably small, carnivorous animals that walked on two feet.

In 2009, Field Museum paleontologist Lindsay Zanno was the principle author of a study that reported the discovery of a new species of the bizarre and enigmatic dinosaurs known as therizinosaurs (“reaper-lizards”). The fossilized remains of the new dinosaur, dubbed Nothronychus graffami (no-thrown-EYE-kus GRA-fam-eye), are the most complete remains of a large-bodied therizinosaur yet discovered worldwide. Only three species of this rare type of dinosaur have been found in North America to date. Therizinosaurs are intriguing because they belong to a group of dinosaurs that includes such legendary meat-eaters Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor but scientists think therizinosaurs were plant-eaters, not predators. Advanced therizinosaurs, like N. graffami, had odd bodies. Their small heads had a beak and tiny, leaf-shaped teeth. The dinosaur had a long neck, an enormous, barrel-shaped gut, stumpy legs, and a short tail, but most impressive were its enlarged scythe-shaped hand claws almost a foot in length! The team doesn’t know why Nothronychus has such enormous claws on its hands but speculate they may have been used in feeding, for predator intimidation, or for sexual display.

Scientists found N. graffami while excavating plesiosaurs and other sea-dwelling animals in marine rocks deposited in southern Utah. No dinosaurs are known to have lived in the water, so encountering one was the last thing the paleontologists expected. The burial ground of the nearly complete skeleton was at least 60 miles from the ancient shoreline. How the dinosaur carcass made it so far out to see relatively intact when the waters were teeming with predators and scavengers remains a mystery.

The Protorsauria is an order of predatory reptiles that lived as far back as 280 million years ago. Scientists had long been puzzled about the function of the extremely long neck that characterizes some species of this group. A new species of protorosaur, however, provides suggests that the long neck in these animals may have been part of a unique and very effective method for capturing prey in water.

Dinocephalosaurus orientalis, which means “terrible-headed lizard from the Orient,” was discovered in southern China a few years ago. It has a neck made up of 25 vertebrae with elongated cervical ribs extending along them.

Olivier Rieppel, Field Museum paleontologist, studied the ancient reptile and co-authored a paper in 2004 that described how the animal’s long neck functioned in feeding.

Rieppel and his colleagues found that the unusual neck structure of Dinocephalosaurus allowed it to suction feed. Unlike other animals that suction feed by expanding the volume of their mouths, when Dinocephalosaurus thrust its head forward to capture prey, the ribs along its neck splayed outward. This increased the diameter of the esophagus, creating a suction force for swallowing prey.

In addition, the reptile’s long neck allowed it to draw near its prey stealthily so it would have less chance of being detected. To a fish in murky water, Dinocephalosaurus’s head would have looked like another animal its own size, but by the time the fish was able to see the predator’s body, it was already lunch!

Because of these feeding methods, scientists have dubbed Dinocephalosaurus “the sneaky sea monster” – an apt description.

The Earth experienced its biggest mass extinction about 250 million years ago, an event that wiped out an estimated 95 percent of marine species and 70 percent of land species. In 2006, two Field Museum paleontologists, Peter Wagner and Scott Lidgard, along with former University of Chicago colleague Matt Kosnik, published a paper detailing how this mass extinction did more than eliminate species: it fundamentally changed the basic ecology of the world’s oceans.

After the mass extinction, ecologically simple marine communities were largely displaced by complex communities. This apparently abrupt shift set a new pattern that has continued ever since. It reflects the current dominance of higher-metabolism, mobile organisms (such as snails, crabs, burrowing clams, and sea urchins) that actually go out and find their own food and the decreased diversity of older groups of low-metabolism, stationary organisms (such as lamp shells and sea lilies) that filter nutrients from the water. After the mass extinction, the complex communities outnumbered the simple communities nearly two to one.

This striking change escaped detection until recently because previous research relied on single numbers – such as the number of species alive at one particular time or the distribution of species in a local community – to track the diversity of marine life. In the new research, however, scientists examined the relative abundance of marine life forms in communities over the past 540 million years.

One reason they were able to do this is because they tapped the new Paleobiology Database, a huge repository of fossil occurrence data. The result is the first broad objective measurement of changes in the complexity of marine ecology during the Phanerozoic era (the half-billion-year period in which multi-celled organisms have lived on Earth).

Do you like to hunt fossils? Come with us to the world-famous Mazon Creek site, and discover what Illinois was like more than 300 million years ago! Participants should plan on a one-quarter mile walk. This program is for families with children ages 8-17.

No need to RSVP. Join us in the Crown Family PlayLab Memorial Day weekend as we celebrate SUE the T. rex's 10^th year at The Field Museum. We'll have SUE hats, games, and art projects!

Come meet the fossil hunter who discovered SUE the T. rex – hear her stories and get her autograph. Sue Hendrickson will be at The Field Museum Memorial Day weekend!

Dinosaur Train is the exciting new series for preschoolers on PBS hosted by Dr. Scott D. Sampson, Ph.D. Come meet “Dr. Scott” live in person as he presents a special family lecture featuring some of his favorite dinosaur discoveries as related to his recent book, Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in the Web of Life. A book signing will follow.

Come and celebrate all dinosaurs this May. Together we'll walk, skip, and jump in the tracks of some of your favorite dinosaurs like the Tyrannosaurus rex and the Apatosaurus.

Come celebrate SUE’s 10^th year at The Field Museum at anyone of our three special Dozin’ with the Dinos 10^th Anniversary Sleepovers. Handle excavation tools scientists use to examine SUE’s bones and take part in jam-packed activities suitable for all dino-lovers.

*Premium sleep packages in the Genius Hall of Dinosaurs are on a first-come, first-served basis

I spy a dinosaur. This early childhood education camp is designed expressly for explorers ages 3-5 and their caregivers. Join us for two-days of dinosaur discoveries and dinosaur bone digging! This is a peanut-free program.

Café Science: The Importance of SUE the T. rex – featuring Peter J. Makovicky, Ph.D

Join us for an evening discussion on SUE, the most complete T. rex ever found. Learn about the importance of SUE’s discovery, what SUE has taught us about dinosaurs, and what she tells us about the world 67 million years ago.

Come join us on a paleontology dig! Discover different fossil types as you dig out a fossil, the way real paleontologists do. This is recommended for children age 2-6 and their families.