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Tyrannosaurus Sue: The Extraordinary Saga of Largest, Most Fought Over T. Rex Ever Found - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Tyrannosaurus Sue: The Extraordinary Saga of Largest, Most Fought Over T. Rex Ever Found

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Over 65 million years ago in what is now South Dakota, a battle-scarred Tyrannosaurus rex matriarch—perhaps mortally wounded in a ferocious fight—fell into the riverbed and died. In 1990 her skeleton was found, virtually complete, in what many have called the most spectacular dinosaur fossil discovery to date.

And then another battle began - a "survival of the fittest" free-for-all involving commercial dinosaur hunters, gun-toting law officers, an ambitious federal prosecutor, a Native American tribe, jealous academics, an enterprising auction house, major museums, and corporate giants, all making their claim for the dinosaur named Sue. Before it was over, there would be claims and counterclaims; charges of checkbook-polluted science, criminal larceny, and vengeful prosecutions; and devastating prison terms. And the gavel would come down on the largest-ever ($8.36 million) auction price tag for a fossil, paid by Chicago's Field Museum, with help from Disney and McDonald's.

Capturing the whole range of characters and issues embroiled in the fight for Sue, author Steve Fiffer communicates both the excitement over Sue's discovery and the motivations, maneuverings, and absurdities of the various forces attempting to control her destiny.

ISBN-13: 9780716794622

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Holt - Henry & Company - Inc.

Publication Date: 05-01-2001

Pages: 272

Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.61(d)

Steve Fiffer is a lawyer, journalist, and author. With his wife, Sharon, he has co-edited three anthologies of original essays by contemporary writers—Home, Family, and Body (McKay, David). Fiffer is the author of Three Quarters, Two Dimes and a Nickel: A Memoir of Becoming Whole (Free Press, 1999). He is co-author, with celebrated civil rights attorney Morris Dees, of A Season for Justice (Scribners) and Hate Trial (Villard)—a 1993 New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His personal essays and features have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, and the Midwesterner. He and his wife live with their three children in Evanston, Illinois.

Read an Excerpt

Tyrannosaurus Sue

The Extraordinary Saga of Largest, Most Fought Over T. Rex Ever Found
By Steve Fiffer

W.H. Freeman & Company

Copyright © 2001 Steve Fiffer
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0716794624


Chapter One


IT MUST BE A T. REX


"Five hundred thousand dollars," said Redden. He let the figure roll off his tongue slowly. The surreal nature of the moment hadn't escaped him. The bidding had begun, and he and a dinosaur named Sue had entered the kind of Salvador Dali landscape you might expect to find on the Sotheby's auction block.<

Table of Contents

Introduction — Dr. Robert Bakker (author of The Dinosaur Heresies)

Prologue

1. It must be a T.rex.

2. Never, ever for sale.

3. You better get out here, Pete.

4. Like taking a Howitzer to a fly.

5. Who owns Sue?

6. Is a dinosaur "land?"

7. Jurassic farce

8. You can indict a ham sandwich.

9. Negotiations are under way.

10. I kept waiting for something to happen.

11. The Hope Diamond of fossils.

12. Everything changed that day.

Epilogue