Drunk on Geology: Drunk on Paleontology - King Sue Double India Pale Ale

The next Drunk on Paleontology is for King Sue Double India Pale Ale from Toppling Goliath Brewing Company out of Decorah, Iowa.

King Sue is named after SUE (AKA FMNH PR 2081), the Chicago Field Museum's Tyrannosaurus rex. SUE the T. rex was initially discovered by Sue Henderson, and named after her. SUE, the T. rex, is identified as "SUE" to distinguish her from her founder, "Sue".

Looking at our past posts, this is not our first beer from Toppling Goliath Brewing Company, and far from the first post about the Tyrannosaurus rex. The other Toppling Goliath beer is for Pseudo Sue Pale Ale, which is also named for SUE. The Pseudo Sue Pale Ale post focused on the recreation efforts of T. rexes, specifically the coloring used on the recreation on package.

Other T. rex posts we have had are the Tooth & Claw Dry Hopped Lager by Off Color Brewing, which is also specifically about SUE. That post focused on the skeletal reconstruction of SUE, since the label design featured an artistic representation of SUE's skeleton on them.

The third T. rex post I had done was for Soul Rex Double IPA by Level Crossing Brewing Company, and for that one I had focused on T. rex in general, since that beer was not specifically about SUE.

For this post, we are going to look at SUE's discovery and a little bit about her.

SUE the T. rex in the field as discovered by Sue Hendrickson. Image was taken at the Field Museum.

After excavation, the fossil was determined to be 90% complete, far more complete than any other T. rex at the time and is still one of the most complete fossil T. rexes ever discovered. SUE was contentious because of where she was discovered and who owned the land that she was discovered on. In short, the Black Hills Institute (BHI) in South Dakota, of which Sue Hendrickson was a part of, discovered the T. rex on a ranch on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation. A dispute erupted over the ownership of the fossil between the BHI, the rancher Maurice Williams, and the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe.

SUE the T. rex in her former home in the Stanley Field Hall in the Chicago Field Museum back in August of 2016.

This prompted the federal government to step in and claim the fossil. Eventually, it was determined that the land under which the fossil was found on was tribal land, held in trust by the US Government. So the land owner, Maurice Williams, ended up with the fossil, under trust from the US Government. Williams was then granted leave by the US Government to sell the fossil through auction. The fossil was shipped to Sotheby's in NY and sold in 1997 for $8.36 million. The purchasing winner was the Chicago Field Museum with significant funding from the Walt Disney Company and McDonalds. At the time, SUE was the most expensive fossil ever sold until 2020, when Stan, another T. rex sold for over $30 million. There have been several books, journal articles, and documentaries about the controversy surrounding SUE, from all points of view. I won't recommend any particular one since they mostly are biased one way or another.

SUE in her fairly new home within the Griffin Dinosaur Experience at the Chicago Field Museum as of April of 2019.

Originally, SUE was mounted in 2000 in the Stanley Field Hall, the main hall of the museum (pictured two above). I liked this location because it really accentuated the size of SUE amongst the grandeur of the hall. You could see the artistic representation of T. rex, high up on the wall as well. SUE's skull was located just below that on the upper level hallway. SUE was later moved to her new home in the Field Museum called the Griffin Dinosaur Experience in 2018. While not as grandiose, this new location did allow for SUE to be featured more prominently as an exhibit herself. And her original fossil skull is located a few feet away instead on a completely different floor.

SUE's original skull before it had been "fixed" by paleontologists in the cast of her complete skeleton.

SUE was discovered within the Hell Creek Formation and has been dated to being about 67 million years old. This makes her one of the last dinosaurs of the Mesozoic. She is 40.5 feet and 13 feet tall, has been determined to be ~28 years old when she died, and is estimated to have weighed around 9 tons. Besides being nearly complete, one of the really cool things about SUE is the entire reconstruction of the skull. When discovered and pieced back together, the skull of SUE was essentially squished (all of which happened after death and burial). The skull itself also weighs over 600 pounds, so a reconstruction was needed in order to just display the skull.

In exchange for putting up the cash to buy SUE, McDonalds and the Walt Disney Corporation both received models of SUE. Up until recently, you could even have seen Disney's SUE model, down in Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World (pictured below).