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Kids get chance to rename T-rex
January 24, 1998
Sue's head on display at Sotheby's auction house in October 1997
Web posted at: 8:24 p.m. EST (0124 GMT)CHICAGO (Reuters) -- Sue is big. Sue is scary. Sue is all bones -- and soon could be Mary.
Or any other name officials from Chicago's Field Museum pick from a contest to be launched Tuesday to rename Sue, its nearly complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton bought at auction last October for $8.3 million.
U.S. children in kindergarten through sixth grade will have from Tuesday until February 20 to pick a new name for Sue.
The winner, to be selected in March, will get a computer with dinosaur software, museum spokeswoman Nancy O'Shea said.
The dinosaur was nicknamed Sue by the Black Hills Institute for Susan Hendrickson, who found the T-rex bones in South Dakota in 1990. Ownership of the name has been claimed by the institute and disputed by the museum.
"They claim the name is theirs, and we disagree with them. And rather than continue our discussion, we want to move the project forward, and we feel the best way to move it forward is to give it a new name," O'Shea said.
Michael Parrish, a paleontologist at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb and research associate at the Field Museum, said Sue was one of the most spectacular dinosaur skeletons ever found because it was nearly complete.
It is expected to be ready for exhibit at the Chicago Field museum in 2000.
Tyrannosaurus rex is believed to be the biggest carnivore to roam prehistoric Earth about 65 million years ago.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Related sites:
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- The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
- Dinosauria On-Line
- The Dinosaur Web Pages by T. Mike Keesey
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