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It turns out that while rancher Williams did own the land, the acreage on which Sue was found had been placed in trust to the U.S. government. Thus he had no right to sell the fossil in the first place--at least not without Department of the Interior approval. And indeed, when the Black Hills Institute sued the government for Sue's return, a federal district court ruled that the original sale was invalid.
Meanwhile, after a seven-week trial and two weeks of deliberation, a jury convicted Larson on only two felonies--failing to report $31,700 in travelers' checks to U.S. Customs when he returned from Japan, and failing to report $15,000 in cash that he and a friend took on a trip to Peru. He was also convicted of two misdemeanors: illegally taking a fossil worth less than $100 from federal land and illegally retaining another small fossil. On his Bureau of Prisons admission form, Larson's offense was listed as "failure to fill out forms."
Who won the case? That depends on whom you ask. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Mandel is convinced the penalty would have been more severe if local press coverage hadn't tainted his case. The defense, predictably, thinks it won by persuading the jury that its client was the victim of academics trying to drive commercial fossil hunters out of business.
Wherever the truth lies, Sue ended up back in Williams' hands, and the government not only gave him permission to sell but urged him to go the auction route. Why? "It was hard to set a fixed price and hard to know a fair price," says Sotheby's executive vice president David Redden, who is in charge of the sale.
The $1 million-plus that Sue is expected to draw will undoubtedly seem fair to Williams, although scientists like the Academy of Natural Sciences' Wolberg fear it will send the costs of acquiring important fossils out of sight. In fact, another T. rex, known as Mr. Z Rex, is on the market for a staggering $12 million. The owners, says Jim Wyatt, a fossil dealer who is acting as broker, "based that price on the excitement generated by T. rexes and dinosaurs in general over the past few years."
Things may be getting a little too exciting out in the field. Two weeks ago, FBI agents thwarted Montana ranchers who were going after a T. rex skeleton with a tractor, presumably to remove it from federal land and sell it on the open market. And the public's hunger for fossils isn't limited to dinosaurs. Wyatt recently brokered the sale, for $2,400, of some bits of fossilized Cro-Magnon man advertised over his fossilnet.com Website--a sale that was condemned by anthropologists.
Ironically, the Black Hills Institute may yet get its bones back. Larson's organization has kept its hand in the game by contributing material to the auction catalog and advising Sotheby's on how to care for the fossils. Thanks to a wealthy benefactor named Stanford Adelstein, the institute will make a serious bid on Sue this week. And it's no secret how South Dakotans feel about the prospect of bringing their T. rex home. Said Governor William Janklow in a statement released by the institute: "She belongs in South Dakota. She lived and died here, and we want her back."
--Reported by David Bjerklie and Andrea Dorfman/New York and Patrick Dawson/Billings