Bill Gates could buy her on a whim. So, for that matter, could Steven Spielberg, Michael Crichton or Madonna. She would make a terrific conversation piece--one of the biggest and most complete fossil skeletons of Tyrannosaurus rex ever found. She's called Sue, and she's for sale to the highest bidder.
No one knows what will happen, of course, when Sue goes up for auction at Sotheby's in New York City this Saturday. She may well end up in a natural history museum, rather than as a lawn ornament of the rich and famous.
But Sue has gone on the block in such a high-profile way that her price (not to mention her head) will inevitably go through the roof--and that's a problem for paleontologists, for whom a fossil this good is almost priceless. A nonprofit institution like the (currently Tyrannosaurus-less) Smithsonian, for example, will probably have to scrape up at least $1 million, and possibly more, to get this irreplaceable specimen--which is only partly mineralized and so offers scientists a rare chance to study actual dinosaur-bone tissue. "This will open the floodgates," says Don Wolberg, executive director of special projects at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. "I think it's criminal to auction something like this."
This isn't the first time the word criminal has come up in reference to Sue. In fact, her history since discovery has been a twisted tale of lawsuits, FBI raids, felony prosecutions and one of the longest criminal trials in South Dakota history--culminating in an 18-month jail sentence for Peter Larson, the man who dug Sue out of a hillside in the state.
"I was in the wrong place at the wrong time," says Larson, who was released last month. The place was South Dakota's Cheyenne River Sioux reservation, the time 1990. Larson was on a prospecting trip for the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, a well-respected commercial fossil-supply house he founded in 1974. There's no law against selling fossils, even important ones, as long as they're found on private land, and that's what Larson thought he'd done. The acreage in question belonged to Maurice Williams, a Sioux cattle rancher, and Larson had secured permission in advance to go digging on his land.
The person who actually found the dinosaur was Susan Hendrickson, then Larson's girlfriend. After 17 days of excavating, they had what would turn out to be the most pristine T. rex specimen ever found. Larson named the monster (which he thinks might even be female) Sue, in honor of her discoverer.
Larson then wrote Williams a check for $5,000 and shipped the bones to institute headquarters in Hill City, S.D., where he planned to catalog, prepare, mount and display the magnificent skeleton. Larson started giving public lectures and publishing popular articles on Sue. Tourists began streaming in.
Then, in May 1992, a different kind of visitor arrived: FBI agents and National Guard troops, among others, raided the Black Hills Institute, seizing Sue and other fossils, along with photos, business records and documents. In 1993 a federal grand jury indicted Larson and five colleagues on a total of 39 felony charges, including stealing fossils from government land.