Treasurer hunter Sue Hendrickson's secret visit with T-rex fossil she discovered
Sneed on Sunday….
Sue?
Who knew?
It had been a long time since marine archeologist Sue Hendrickson laid eyes on her beloved Chicago Field Museum namesake, “Sue the T-rex,” the world’s most complete Tyrannosaurus rex fossil — which she discovered in 1990.
“I’ve been meaning to visit ‘Sue’ so many times, and I miss her,” said Hendrickson, a self-described introvert who hadn’t seen “Sue” in 14 years when we chatted the other day.
“But, you know, things happen, and I hate all the publicity fuss.”
Then, just like that, Sue Hendrickson suddenly appeared at the Field Museum on Wednesday.
Secretly, unannounced and wearing a COVID mask for anonymity, Hendrickson arrived at the museum alone and headed quietly to her namesake’s new dino digs on the museum’s second floor.
In an exclusive interview after her surprise visit to “Sue,” Hendrickson talked about her personal relationship with the world-famous fossil found about 90% intact.
“I really just wanted to thank ‘Sue’ for letting me rescue her from a 66-million-year-old sleep before she eroded away forever,” she told Sneed.
“And I wanted to see ‘Sue’ on my own and talk … um, to her skull, which I had done when we found her years ago with her head tucked tight under her pelvis,” she said.
“I’m glad I wore the mask, although I’ve had COVID three times, because I actually started to cry when I saw her,” she added.
A ‘hunch’ that made history
A digger, a diver, a searcher for sunken treasure, Hendrickson discovered the legendary dinosaur on a wild card’s chance. She was hiking with her golden retriever Gypsy, on the “hunch” that “there might be something in an exposed cliff” she spotted on a boiling hot, foggy day in South Dakota.
The discovery became an international sensation.
“I still can’t believe it,” Hendrickson said. “I was a bit worn out after sleeping outside for two months while digging for dinosaur bones that day … and we were one day away from the end of the season when we developed a flat tire,” Hendrickson told me back in 1997.
“So Gypsy and I decided to take a hike to a butte we missed while the rest of our crew from the Black Hills Institute drove 30 miles back into town to get the tire fixed.
“I got lost, it was foggy and I walked in a circle for two hours. The fog finally lifted. Hours later, we reached the butte. It wasn’t long before I saw three articulated vertebrae exposed in the cliff.”
The rest is history — millions of years of it.
In 1997, the Field Museum purchased the five-ton T-Rex at a Sotheby’s auction for more than $8 million, backed by the McDonald’s Corporation and Walt Disney World Resorts.
The South Dakotan Indian family on whose ranch “Sue” was found got the cash.
Hendrickson did not attend “Sue’s” move in 2017 from her original space on the museum’s first floor — now occupied by the cast of a 122-foot-long titanosaur from Argentina — to her new exhibit space on the second floor.
But Hendrickson makes no bones about her enthusiasm for the new digs, giving them “a big thumbs up!”
Indiana Sue has her own history
Born in Chicago, raised in Munster, Ind., Hendrickson was bred on a diet of childhood treasure hunting by “instinctively walking with my head down,” she said.
Also a field paleontologist, Hendrickson has helped excavate the Spanish shipwreck “San Diego” sunk in the Philippines in 1600, combed mines in the Dominican Republic for ancient insects trapped in amber, and spent years helping excavate Cleopatra’s palace in the sunken city of Thonis-Heracleion, led by French marine archeologist Frank Goddio.
She has also spent years operating a free clinic for rescue animals on the Honduran island of Guanaja, where she lives on 500 acres of “privately and environmentally protected property I’d like to sell.”
At last peek, Hendrickson expressed disappointment there were no “Sue” books available at the museum.
But I have one.
It’s a children’s book entitled, “When Sue Found Sue” by author Toni Buzzeo with amazing illustrations by Diana Sudyka.
Sue Hendrickson is indeed, as the book states, born to find things.
Sneedlings …
Condolences to Chicago auction legend Leslie Hindman on the death of her larger-than-life father, Don Hindman, who died last week at the age of 97. No father had a better daughter! As a favorite past time, Don Hindman, who hailed from New Martinsville, West Virginia, loved to share down home stories with his fellow New Martinsville buddy, the late, legendary WTTW-TV legend John Calloway
Saturday birthdays: Patrick Stewart, 84; Harrison Ford, 82; Cheech Marin, 78; Cameron Crowe, 67; country singer Louise Mandrell, 70 … Sunday birthdays: actress Jane Lynch, 64; “Sopranos” actor Vincent Pastore, 78; footballer Rosey Grier, 92; “Sunset Boulevard” actress Nancy Olson, 96.