Sue's Lips
Hi Bestie!!
It's been too long. It's so nice to see you again. I'm going to try to rub out a quick one (your mom liked it)* while my other unhinged ramblings (pie! ugly trees! a woman who was abandoned in New Foundland for a really long time!) languish until another day.
Big news last week!
Fred Durst shakes hands with the former president and currently indicted Donald Trump at the 2000 MTV VMAs (2000) pic.twitter.com/DxK0OilRzL
— crazy ass moments in nu metal history (@numetal_moment) March 30, 2023
Hehehe.
Dinosaurs have lips! It’s taken over a week of me trying to shirk my duties as a bartender (and editor) to tell you this; It’s really important to me that you know that the T. rex looks kind of like a penis.
You get to see my whole browser because my iCloud is too full to crop the details. But you also have to see the illustration to understand, you know?
Until this week, the public believed that the T. rex resembled a crocodile, with exposed teeth. Fearsome! But a study published in Science suggests it “looked more like a lizard, with scaly lips covering and sealing their mouths when closed.” Of course, some paleontologists disagree, pointing to fossils they believe indicate the dinosaur’s teeth were always exposed. An argument is that teeth covered in enamel need to be wet so they didn’t crack. (Like our teeth!) Crocodiles live in the water (but nevertheless experience cracked teeth), whereas the T. rex did not live in a swamp or suffer cracked enamel.
Regarded as one of the "fiercest predators of all time," the forty-foot-long dinosaur remains beloved by toddlers and Katherines everywhere, though I’m partial to any dinosaur that resembles a brontosaurus or the megalodon (naturally). Still, the public’s captivation with the tyrannosaurus is that we’re constantly learning more. Sort of the entire purpose of science!
Researchers believe the T. rex’s jaws could crush a car. The dinosaur had 60 eight-inch-long teeth. As a fledgling, it was the size of a turkey.
The first “full” skeleton, Sue, found in 1990 in South Dakota, is 42 feet long. Because the gender of Sue remains undetermined (“in an effort to…remain true to the lack of scientific data”) Sue uses they/them pronouns. They were the oldest found skeleton until Trix) was found in Montana in 2013. (Sue was 28, Trix was over 30.) Sue’s cause of death is unknown, but they appear to have suffered from gout. Dinosaurs had gout!! Like people!!
(I wanted a still from The Favorite but found this article about dictators instead.)
Sue resides in Chicago’s Field Museum. They are named after the fossil collector who found them, Sue Hendrickson. I skimmed Hendrickson’s Wikipedia article while writing this, and saw this: “An adventurous and rebellious teenager, Hendrickson never completed high school, dropping out at the age of 17 in favor of moving from state to state with her boyfriend before settling in Florida, where she was hired by two professional divers who enterprised an aquarium fish business.”
If she’s written a memoir, I’m reading it. (Hunt for the Past: My Life as an Explorer, 2010.)
Decorah, Iowa brewery Toppling Goliath named one of its beers after the fossil. The Pseudo Sue IPA almost led to a lawsuit; the brewery developed a new beer, King Sue, and agreed to raise money for the museum to get out of a lawsuit. (If anyone should feel litigious it’s Hendrickson!)
Also: Sue was found on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, and there was a dispute as to the ownership and sale of the skeleton. I think it’s important to note that since Sue was found on (literal) Native land. Sue was purchased at auction for $8.3 million, and $7 million of that went to the landowner. (A conversation for another time: I don’t think dinosaurs should be privately owned.) At the time of Sue’s sale there was a lot of concern that they would go to a private person’s collection. People display their dinosaurs in their living rooms! Which would be cool, except, I disagree with that on principle–and those are the kind of wealthy people who are never home.
My most controversial take on all of this is that Carl Koppelman, the guy who illustrates unidentified descendants should take a crack at fossils and skeletons. As Othram continues to make more and more identifications, some of his work has been quite accurate! I'll spare you an elaboration on unidentified descendants but I will assure you that the link contains no photos of people post-mortem.
* I'm sorry.
**Supposedly you can reach Indiana Dunes National Park easily from Chicago, so you’d see the dunes, the beach, the forest, a hot beef sandwich, a shot of Malört, and Sue all in one trip.
Sources!
Aschbrenner, J. (2016, December 30). Toppling Goliath avoids trademark battle and breaks into the Chicago market. Des Moines Register. Retrieved March 31, 2023, from https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/biz-buzz/2016/12/30/toppling-goliath-avoids-trademark-battle-and-breaks-into-chicago-market/95803042/.
Cullen, T. M., Larson, D. W., Witton, M. P., Scott, D., Mao, T., Brink, K., Evans, D. C., & Reisz, R. (2023). Science, 379(6639), 1348–1352.
Cullen, T. M., Larson, D. W., Witton, M. P., Scott, D., Tea Mao, Brink, K., Evans, D. C., & Reisz, R. (2023). Science, 379(6639), 1348–1352. Retrieved March 31, 2023, from science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo7877.
Grandoni, D. (2023, March 30). Scientists say your idea of how the T. rex looked is probably wrong. The Washington Post. Retrieved March 31, 2023, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/03/30/t-rex-teeth-drawing-study/.
Hilfrank, E. (n.d.). Tyrannosaurus rex. Animals. Retrieved March 31, 2023, from https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/prehistoric/facts/tyrannosaurus-rex
Lewis, D. (2023, March 30). Facelift for T. rex: analysis suggests teeth were covered by thin lips. Nature. Retrieved April 1, 2023, from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00928-y.
Volpe, T. (2018, February 6). Sue the T. rex goes nonbinary. Windy City Times. Retrieved March 31, 2023, from https://www.windycitytimes.com/lgbt/Sue-the-T-rex-goes-nonbinary/61823.html.
Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, February 18). Sue Hendrickson. Wikipedia. Retrieved March 31, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Hendrickson
From my February visit to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.
Always your friend,
Katherine