Author: Danielle Bengsch / Source: ResearchGate
SUE is one of the most complete and largest specimens of T.Rex we know of. Recently discovered small shark teeth tell a tale about the world she lived in.
Back in 1990, paleontologist Sue Hendrickson’s team had a flat tire after a dig, and while the team took care of the problem, she continued to inspect the area and found bones sticking out of a nearby hillside.
These bones belonged to a female T.Rex that lived some 67 million years ago and was later named SUE after the woman who discovered her.Wisely, scientists from the Field Museum in Chicago where SUE’s remains are on display today, held on to the rock she was found in. Sieving through this sediment, they discovered tooth fossils that belonged to a small shark and published about it in a new study. Peter Makovicky, the museum’s associate curator, answered our questions about the shark, and what it tells us about SUE.
ResearchGate: What made you look at the earth surrounding SUE?
Peter Makovicky: Bill Simpson, the Museum’s Collection Manager of Fossil Vertebrates, and leader of the team that prepared SUE, had the foresight to save the sediment that accumulated during the preparation process, the cleaning of the fossil.
About a decade later, Terry “Bucky” Gates joined my lab and began a project to screen the sediments to look for microvertebrate fossils – teeth, scales, and bones of small animals – to build a better picture of what lived in the environment with SUE. This involved suspending the sediment in water and then running the slurry through a set of connected sieves, each with a finer mesh than the preceding one. Once the sediment was screened and the sand and silt is washed away, the remaining concentrate needed to be carefully picked through.
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