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).

Model of SUE, formerly located in Animal Kingdom. 

References

https://www.livescience.com/29331-dinosaur-smuggling-cases-t-rex.html

https://singaporefossils.wordpress.com/2016/10/28/top-10-most-expensive-fossils/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40656-019-0288-4

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/kidspost/sue-the-t-rex-gets-new-home-at-chicago-museum/2018/12/20/a5a94bde-02e9-11e9-9122-82e98f91ee6f_story.html

https://www.fieldmuseum.org/blog/sue-t-rex

https://www.livescience.com/16524-rex-dinosaur-weighed.html

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sue

Drunk on Paleontology - Finca El Origen Reserva Malbec

The next Drunk on Paleontology is for Finca El Origen Reserva Malbec from Finca El Origin  out of Mendoza, Argentina.

Clearly this is a wonderful example of Drunk on Paleontology, with the large ammonite fossil spread across the bottle. But before we even get into the fossil, lets take a look at the geology itself. The back of the bottle has a geological description of the wine local:

Text from the bottle:

First is was an ocean. Then mountains and later a mountain range. Now it is home to the high-altitude vineyards that produce wines with a mountain-inspired personality and a complexity and character only this terroir can bestow.

Their website has a little more information on the source of their logo, or at least the inspiration for their logo:

Not only is our vineyard ideal for precision viticulture, but it also the witness of history: A Nautilus fossil was found while preparing the land for winegrowing. These sea snails from the Jurassic period are silent bystanders of the formation of the Andes, which were once an ocean.

Location map from Finca El Origen's website

The winery is located in Los Chacayes, which is in the Valle de Uco, Mendoza, Argentina. It sits right at the eastern base of the Andes Mountains, just over the border from Santiago, Chile. The Andes Mountains, though, are a jumbled up mess of geology, and I can't find very many definitive sources for geological units. I have found two websites that seem to offer some information. 

Geological map of the Mendoza region around Los Chacayes from the Geological Map of South America. Los Chacayes is highlighted with the star. 

The above map is from the "Geological Map of South America", and while a useful source for a general map of the entire continent, it doesn't have very many details for the specific unit we are looking at. Unit "203" on the map, the unit that encompasses the entirety of Los Chacayes, is identified on the map as being from Permian to Triassic in age and comprised of rhyolitic volcanic rocks. And that's about it. Even going to the original document doesn't provide much more information. 

The other map I tried was the "Mapa Geológico Bicontinental de la República Argentina"

Geological map of the Mendoza region around Los Chacayes from the Mapa Geológico Bicontinental de la República Argentina. Los Chacayes is highlighted with the star.

This second map also has the same shape of the unit that we are interested in, identified as PTSs. But they have a little more information on the unit. Here it is identified as "Siliciclastic and volcanic rocks, Permian to Triassic in age". And that's about it. Obviously this location would once have been an ocean basin, due to the ammonite fossil found within, but other than that it looks like we are limited at the moment. Looking at the fossil itself: 

The ammonite fossil on the bottle is clearly an artistic rendering of a the ammonite fossil, and I think it is not actually the fossil that was found on the vineyard locality. This is because it seems to match a drawing of an ammonite fossil done over 100 years ago. 

Plate 44 Ammonites in Haekel's 1899 Kunstformen der Natur.

The illustration on the wine bottle seems to match ammonite on the center right in the image above, if we flip the image and adjust for the curvature of the bottle. The lines on the ridges match location placement and numbers, as well as the knobs on the inner part of the swirl.

Comparison of the Finca El Origen ammonite and Haekel's 1899 illustration

The degree of similarity is too much to ignore. Haekel's ammonite illustration is of the ammonite Douvilleiceras mammillatum. While Douvilleiceras mammillatum can be found in many places across the globe, there have been no instances of discovery within Argentina. The closest location to this, is one instance within Brazil, and regardless, Douvilleiceras mammillatum is a lower to middle Cretaceous age fossil (Aptian - Albian), meaning that the rocks within the vineyard are much too old to house this fossil (they are Permian to Triassic in age, at least 80 million years older than Douvilleiceras mammillatum). Therefore the fossil on the bottle is clearly not the one that was found. 

Well then, what was the fossil found?

Picture of the other ammonite from the Finca El Origen website.

On the winery's website, they have two pictures of real fossil ammonites among the description of why there's an ammonite on the bottle. The first ammonite pictured is a clear image of a split and polished ammonite (pictured above). Despite being a paleontologist myself, I am far from an expert on ammonites. From my knowledge of ammonites it is exceedingly difficult to identify them with any accuracy based on the internal structure. However, comparing this to other ammonites, this example appears to be an ammonite from much later in the time period, like the illustration on the bottle. From what I can tell, this looks like a cut and polished ammonite from the Albian (middle Cretaceous) of Madagascar. It seems to resemble a Cleoniceras ammonite, like the one pictured below. But in general, this ammonite pictured is again, impossible to have occurred within the time period and region of the rocks within the winery. I have reached out to an ammonite specialist and if I hear anything back I will update. 

Cleoniceras besairei from fossilmall.com

The final ammonite pictured on the winery's website, is shown below. While this is clearly a staged photo, we will assume that this is a real fossil and that it has the potential to have been found within the region. 

Picture of an ammonite from the Finca El Origen website.

Searching for ammonites within Argentina, had found several examples of Jurassic or Cretaceous ammonites that occurred within the Mendoza region, however I did find a few examples of Triassic age ammonites.  

Ammonite pieces from Riccardi et al., 2004.

The above images are of fragments of the ammonite Choristoceras found within the Mendoza region of Argentina in Riccardi et al., 2004. Within the article they state that "Ammonoids in the Triassic part of the section are quite rare and so far only part of a whorl and several external moulds have been found." But with the skewed winery ammonite photograph as our example, this appears to be a match, or at least as close of a match as I can be sure of. Choristoceras is also a Triassic age ammonite that went extinct at the end of the Triassic, making it seem like a likely contender. 

Choristoceras illustration from Steinmann, 1890. 

And some images of complete Choristoceras fossils (pictured above) do tend to resemble the image used on the bottle (although the image used is clearly a recreation of Haekel's image). 

Stylized ammonite fossil on the top of the bottle. 

But regardless, the design on the top of the wine bottle of a stylized ammonite fossil is pretty freaking cool.

References

https://fincaelorigen.com/en/home-2/
https://fincaelorigen.com/en/history/
https://fincaelorigen.com/en/reserva-malbec-2/
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=7ecc9e7e0c1f46c8ad44f5e5b476150d
https://www2.sgc.gov.co/MGC/Paginas/gmsa5M2019.aspx
https://sigam.segemar.gov.ar/mapstore/#/viewer/302
https://archive.org/details/KunstformenderN00Haec/page/n230/mode/1up
Haeckel, Ernst. "Kunstformen der Natur [1899]." Die einhundert Farbtafeln im Faksimile mit beschreibendem Text, allgemeiner Erläuterung und systematischer Übersicht: 35
https://paleobiodb.org/classic/checkTaxonInfo?taxon_no=314519&is_real_user=1
http://www.fossilmall.com/EDCOPE_Enterprises/ammonites/ammo63/ammonite63.htm
https://ri.conicet.gov.ar/bitstream/handle/11336/81386/CONICET_Digital_Nro.3f88447b-29b1-455f-882f-23ee5e4272c7_X.pdf
Steinmann, Gustav. Elemente der Paläontologie. Vol. 2. W. Engelmann, 1890.

Drunk on Paleontology - Tricerahops Double IPA

The next Drunk on Paleontology is for Tricerahops Double IPA from the Ninkasi Brewing Company out of Eugene, OR.

Although, obviously named for the dinosaur Triceratops, the Ninkasi website also states that this beer, along with three others, are part of a comic series produced by Dark Horse Comics called Legend of Ninkasi: Rise of Craft.

And according to their comic lore:

Legend has it that Tricerahops, loyal companion to the goddess Ninkasi, acquires his abilities from the goddess’ mystical hops. While our brewery is working on propagating these hops for the good of all, we brewed this Double IPA to showcase all that’s possible. Its floral aromas collide with a splendor of resinous hop notes to create a beer suitable for a magical beast like Tricerahops himself.

Triceratops horridus skeleton and cast from the Field Museum in Chicago, IL. 

The first discovery of  material attributed to Triceratops, was in 1887 by George Lyman Cannon near Denver, Colorado, who had found a set of the brow horns attached to a skull roof. He sent the material to O.C. Marsh who, assuming the rock dates were Pliocene, determined that it was from a prehistoric bison, which he named Bison alticornis. However after a more complete specimen was discovered in 1888 from Wyoming's Lance Formation by John Bell Hatcher, as well as a couple of other discoveries, Marsh reevaluated the initial find and eventually added all the finds under a new species, Triceratops, which he named in 1889, meaning "three-horned face". 

The side of the Tricerahops box notes:

This is our monument to the big and beautiful beasts that came before us. Tricerahops is an ancient field of floral hops with a deep, earthy taste and a balanced finish.

Triceratops belongs to a group of animals known as ceratopsians.

Ceratopsian wall at the Natural History Museum of Utah. Triceratops is the one located in the far right at the top.

Ceratopsians were prolific during the Cretaceous, with many different varieties evolving with various numbers of horns and frill adornments. Triceratops was one of the last ceratopsians to have evolved with remains having been found in rocks dating from ~69 million years ago to the end of the dinosaurs ~66 million years ago. It is estimated that Triceratops could grow up to 30 feet in length and weigh 12,000-16,000 pounds. There are currently two recognized species of Triceratops, T. horridus (pictured above in Chicago) and T. prorsus. 

The skull of Triceratops is one of the largest skulls ever discovered, approaching 10 feet in length in some individuals and not only had the three primary horns (one above each eye and one on the snout), it also had a series of spikes along the edge of the frill known as epoccipitals, and hornlike projects on the jugals (cheekbones). The horns are thought to serve multiple functions, such as defense from predators as well mating display structures. 

References
https://ninkasibrewing.com/
https://www.gbif.org/species/113684498
https://www.britannica.com/animal/Triceratops

Drunk on Paleontology - Soul Rex Double IPA

 

The next Drunk on Paleontology post is for Soul Rex Double IPA by Level Crossing Brewing Company out of Salt Lake City, UT. 

The Soul Rex is clearly an homage to one of the mightiest of dinosaurs, the Tyrannosaurus rex. As pictured on the can, the logo presents a stylized version of the T. rex in shades, a jazz type hat, and holding a bass. I had previously done a couple of T. rex inspired beers before for the Pseudo Sue Pale Ale and the Tooth and Claw Dry Hopped Lager. Both of those beers focused on one specific T. rex skeleton, SUE, located at Chicago's Field Museum. So for this one I will look at the T. rex in general.

The first Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton was discovered in 1902 by Barnum Brown, the then assistant curator for the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York. The bones, discovered in the Hell Creek Formation near Hell Creek, Montana, were identified by a local land owner who then told Brown. The skeleton, only 10% complete, took 3 years to excavate and was then transported to the AMNH where the paleontology curator of the museum, Henry Fairfield Osborn, named the fossil in 1905 Tyrannosaurus rex, meaning "Tyrant Lizard King". 

All fossils of the T. rex have since been found in western North America, ranging from southern Canada down into southern New Mexico and Texas. The T. rex was also one of the last living non-avian dinosaurs, having lived during the late Cretaceous period from about 68 to 66 million years ago, which is when the meteorite struck the Earth, wiping out those non-avian dinosaurs.

Original mount of the T. rex. Image courtesy of the AMNH. 

Although the skeleton discovered initially by Brown was only a partial skeleton, an even more complete skeleton was discovered by Brown 6 years later that became the basis for the skeleton seen above, mounted at the AMNH. It is this mount that went on to influence pop-culture for most of the next hundred years, where the T. rex was almost always portrayed in a vertical pose. Unfortunately this pose was set up mostly because of the steel armature could not do a more dynamic pose. Many of the tail vertebrae even needed to be broken in order to get the T. rex to be standing like this. 

It wasn't until 1993's Jurassic Park, that movie and tv makers really started to take a look at the advancing science behind the dinosaurs and adjusted their models accordingly. For the movie, the T. rex is presented in a much more accurate model, where the body of the beast is balanced over the legs, with the tail acting as a counterweight, forming a giant see-saw. This remodeled T. rex also gives us a much more accurate depiction of its size, where an adult can grow up to ~12 feet tall at the hip and ~40 feet long from tip of the tail to snout. But one of the most notable features of a T. rex were its teeth, that ranged in size up to 12 inches long, which included the root, still leaving approximately a 6 inch tooth exposed.

Text from the back of the can:

Soul Rex Double IPA - A hefty but cultured pint. Sweet notes bellow from a cellar cabaret... you're unwavering to behold who's onstage... as your eyes come into focus in the dark dank chamber... just so you know, he's got soul! This badass beer has a deep golden hue exposing a sophisticated world of tropical fruit whiffs with melon and citrus as the opening act. For the encore, stone fruit and juicy hop bitterness steal the show. This beet performs as intended, a highly drinkable brew to enjoy again and again.

Since the release of Jurassic Park, the science of T. rex has continued to advance. With the discovery that birds are descendants of dinosaurs, and many dinosaurs discovered with feathers, it is now believed that even the T. rex likely sported some variety of plumage, although it is currently unclear how much plumage a T. rex  may have had at any given point in its life. 

It is unclear how much this current model of the T. rex will change as more fossils are discovered and analyzed, but as one of the most famous dinosaurs, there are sure to be many people hunting for the next big breakthrough. Will those future discoveries include that T. rexes liked to hang out in jazz clubs and play the bass? The world may never know.  

References
https://www.fossilguy.com/gallery/vert/dinosaur/tyrannosaurus/trex-discovery.htm
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/barnum-brown-the-man-who-discovered-tyrannosaurus-rex-70758588/
https://www.amnh.org/dinosaurs/tyrannosaurus-rex
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/606903/how-t-rex-american-museum-natural-history-became-icon

https://www.businessinsider.com/t-rex-discoveries-hunted-walked-growth-2021-4

https://tulsaworld.com/location-of-t-rex-fossil-discoveries/image_e1f73009-69c9-5b57-87b8-f616d47a9950.html

Drunk on Paleontology - Pearadactyl Pear Apple Wine

For my next Drunk on Paleontology we have Pearadactyl - Pear Apple Wine by the Carlson Vineyards in Palisade, Colorado. 

Clearly named after the word Pterodactyl, the name of the wine takes advantage of the similar sounds between the the "Pter" (pronounced like tear) and the rhyming "pear". But the word Pterodactyl was first coined in 1809 by Georges Cuvier. This was based on a fossil of an unknown creature first identified in 1784 by Italian scientist Cosimo Collini, who though this must be a marine organism of some kind. Cuvier correctly discerned later that this was a flying animal and coined the phrase "Petro-dactyl" meaning "winged finger":

"Sur le squelette fossile d'un REPTILE VOLANT des environe d'AICHSTEDT, que quelques naturalistes ont pris pour un oiseau, et dont nous formons un genre de SAURIENS, sous le nom de PETRO-DACTYLE."

"On the fossil skeleton of a FLYING REPTILE from the environe of AICHSTEDT, which some naturalists have taken for a bird, and of which we form a genus of SAURIANS, under the name of PETRO-DACTYL."

Cuvier's 1812 drawing of the first "Petro-Dactyl" specimen. Image from Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles de quadrupèdes. t. 4 (1812). https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40032094#page/677/mode/1up.

A Latinized version of Cuvier's descriptive term for the animal was then used by Lorenz Oken in 1818 to name the animal with the official species name of Pterodactylus. Since that time, the term "pterodactyl" is not actually a scientifically valid name. The group of flying reptiles is collectively known as "pterosaurs", which are all the animals that belong to the taxonomic order Pterosauria. Within the order of Pterosauria, there are individual animals such as the Pterodactylus and the Pteranodon, but nothing that would be referred to simply as a "Pterodactyl". 

Reconstruction of the Pterodactylus. Image courtesy of the the Dinopedia Wiki Page.

But despite the misnomer, the name lives on, as anyone who has tried to Google the animal can attest to. Overall, pterosaurs are a group of flying reptiles. They are NOT dinosaurs, having branched off of the reptile family tree before dinosaurs had truly evolved. You can think of them as the cousins of dinosaurs. These flying reptiles were the first vertebrates to have evolved powered flight with some species having grown to tremendous sizes. The largest pterosaur, Quetzalcoatlus northropi, stood 16 feet tall and had a wing span of 33 feet, which is the size some airplanes. They flew using a skin and muscle membrane that stretched across the first three fingers of their hands as well as between their shoulders and wrists to their hind limbs, creating their wings. Some pterosaurs also had the membranes between their legs.  

Life sized reconstruction of a Quetzalcoatlus northropi at Chicago's Field Museum from the Late Cretaceous

The group of Pterosaurs lived from 228 to 66 million years ago, going extinct at the end of the Cretaceous along with the non-avian dinosaurs when the asteroid hit the Earth. It is theorized that these animals were possibly warm-blooded with some (possibly all?) having a furry coating of hair-like filaments over their bodies. 

Trackway of a small pterosaur showing both the fore- and hind-limbs of the animal. Image courtesy of Scientific American. 

As pictured in the reconstruction above, pterosaurs are also known to have walked on all four limbs. Scientists know this from, not only reconstructions of the skeletons, but also fossilized trackways that preserved the hand imprints along with the feet.

Text from the back of the bottle:

"Carlson Vineyard's Pearadactyl is a 100% western Colorado grown, semi-sweet pear-apple wine best served chilled with light foods and good friends. If you close your eyes real tight and think very hard about the way it was 160 million years ago, you just might see a Pearadactyl gliding by with a delectable pear in its beak."

Looking that the Pterodactylus itself, this species of pterosaur lived during the Late Jurassic period, approximately 150 million years ago. This matches fairly closely with the wine's listing of "160 million years ago". 

The bottle also mentions that the Pearadactyl would have been gliding by with a "delectable pear" in its beak. Pears, and pear tree in particular, belong to a group of plants known as angiosperms. Angiosperms include all of the flowering (and fruiting) plants that we know of today. Early angiosperms are thought to have evolved in the Early Cretaceous or the Late Jurassic, ~140-250 million years ago (Nature). Along with the evolution of the flowering plants, is the evolution of the fruit that they bear. 

The pear fruit is a result of the domestication by humans of the pear tree and the cultivation over human history. The plant itself belongs to the Pyrus genus, which is estimated to have evolved only a few 10's of millions of years ago. However, it belongs to the larger group of the Rosaceae family of fruit trees. The Rosaceae family evolved ~100 million years ago, with several ancestral fruit bearing trees having existed alongside the dinosaurs and pterosaurs during the Cretaceous period. This means that although the "pear" would not have been present alongside the "Pearadactyl", perhaps an ancestral fruit would have been.

References

https://blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2015/10/identifying-first-flying-reptile.html
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/29092318#page/423/mode/1up
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40032094#page/677/mode/1up
https://www.livescience.com/24071-pterodactyl-pteranodon-flying-dinosaurs.html
https://dinopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Pterodactylus
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/footprint-find-could-be-a-holy-grail-of-pterosaur-research/
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/34/2/262/2528249