Dinosaur 13 Page #2

We had started a long time ago

naming particular dinosaurs,

and the name Sue,

for Susan Hendrickson,

goes down in history,

and I think that's

a kind of a cool way

to reward those amateurs

who make these discoveries.

We were all

experienced diggers.

You know, it was just

total focused effort.

We would just

work into the specimen,

remove things that we could,

protect the rest of it,

and then take it

out of the ground

and get it back

into the laboratory,

where you can have a more

controlled environment

to take care of the specimen.

The amount of new things

that we found and the amount

of scientific information

that we discovered

while finding Sue was enormous.

Beautifully preserved

articulated skull,

articulated vertebral column

up to the pelvis with the tail

and shoulder blade

and all this stuff,

and it's just like, "Holy cow."

And wonderful preservation.

Just fantastic bones

that were just

beautiful surface on them.

Every time we were ready

to take a bone out or every time

there was some new discovery,

Pete would take

this butcher paper out,

and he mapped each

and every bone one on one

that we found,

that was excavated.

Pete and I had

quite a few discussions

what would be fair.

$5,000 is the most that anybody

had ever given anyone

for a dinosaur,

for any fossil in the ground,

so Pete wrote

a check out for him

and a contract that he

wanted Maurice to sign.

And I showed it to him,

and he said,

"Well, we don't need to sign anything.

It's just something...

a handshake between friends,

and $5,000 is fine.

I'm happy with that."

And, you know, that was the most

that any landowner

had ever gotten.

We shook hands, and he

was pretty excited

about seeing it

set up in the museum.

Last phase of getting Sue

out of the ground,

we used basically

Egyptian techniques

to get this large block.

I mean, we had...

one of the blocks weighed

probably something

close to 10,000 pounds.

There was probably about

10 ton of material total

that we had to load up.

Once we had the skull

and pelvic block

and the tail vertebrae

and everything else,

we knew we could haul

a lot of the stuff

on our Bobcat trailer.

We had no idea how

we were going to be able

to get all these other things.

Well, my brother John had built

a tandem-axle trailer

earlier that year.

With that and the other

pickup truck that we had there,

we were able

to load the fossil up.

After we had built pallets

underneath the fossil,

we were able to scooch

some plywood underneath 'em

so that we could move it

with chains and come-alongs

and get it into the trailers.

It was and still is today

the most exciting,

the most wonderful excavation

we have ever done,

the most incredible thing

we have ever done.

Dinosaurs, for me, are still

one of the most amazing

creatures ever to have

lived on the planet.

You're touching something

that was alive

65, 100, or three or more

hundred million years ago.

When you pick up a fossil,

and you're

the first ever human being

to touch the remains

of that organism,

it's a remarkable feeling.

Dinosaurs are iconic animals.

They represent

paleontology in general.

They represent science.

Dinosaurs lived

for 150 million years,

and they dominated

the world for that long,

and yet humans have only been

around for three, four, or five.

What are our chances?

We seem to be approaching

these big problems.

Most of what is to be learned

about the history of life

is yet to be discovered.

What's still out there?

What's still in the ground?

What some kids might find

100 years from now

will contribute to that

greater understanding.

We know nothing about

the history of the planet

unless learning it through

a paleontologist,

and it's that sense of

deep time, real deep time,

that gives you

a sense of who you are

and how you fit in

to the scheme of things.

I first fell in love

with fossils when I was

about four years old.

I picked up this small tooth

down on my folks' ranch.

From then on,

I just was so fascinated

with fossils.

I just couldn't stop.

Every day that

the weather was good

and every day that

the weather was great

that was on a weekend

if we were going to school

or in the summertime,

Dad would always say,

"Let's go out rock hunting."

We ended up starting

this little museum,

and we'd charge the adults

in our family five cents.

We had little displays

where we set up the things

that we had collected,

and not just fossils and rocks,

but also what we thought

were antiques.

We had this horrible hobby

that started to captivate

every part of our life.

Eventually I decided

to really get into paleontology

and so went

to the South Dakota School

of Mines and Technology

in Rapid City.

Junior year, we went

to the Tucson

Gem and Mineral Show

and really saw how

specimens are purchased

by museums and purchased

by private collectors.

And by the time we graduated,

we started this business

called Black Hills Minerals

as this earth science

supply house.

Eventually

my younger brother Neal,

who was also a student

at the School of Mines,

and Bob Farrar,

one of his classmates,

started working with us as well.

With the three of us

all going

to the School of Mines,

we were problems there,

because all of us chose

not to go into industry.

The first year was terrible,

the second year was not so good,

but it was sort of

turning into a business.

As we kept going,

we kept collecting

more and more fossils

and had the idea

of it probably would work

to sell these

as display specimens.

In 1978,

we were going pretty strong.

We were selling mostly fossils.

We were going out and doing

geological exploration.

So by 1979,

we created this new entity

called Black Hills Institute of

Geological Research, Incorporated,

in the center

of the Black Hills.

We got Sue back to Hill City.

We moved the big blocks

into the warehouse,

actually built a room

around where we had put Sue,

started working

on this wonderful fossil.

When I was prepping Sue,

I was cloistered like a monk

in the back corner

of the back building.

Doing preparation, you just...

"Just leave me alone," right?

But everybody was in there.

There would be

schoolkids in there.

Or another day, there'd be,

you know, some scientist guys

coming along in there.

I mean, Pete had,

like, 30 scientists

working on a major new monograph

on Tyrannosaurus rex,

so you got to suck it up.

Pete wants it this way.

He wants this specimen

available to everybody.

It was so beautiful.

Just the preservation

was incredible.

It was just, "Wow."

Everybody knew about Sue.

We hadn't made

any secret of the fact

that we'd collected her.

We had 2,000 visitors

sign this little guest book

that went way in the back

in our warehouse

to see the skull of Sue.

I was just totally flabbergasted

when I saw the specimen.

First of all, the size

is just so imposing.

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