Paleo in Pop Culture - Mammals, Pterosaurs, and more from the Chicago Field Museum

There is obviously more than just dinosaurs at the Chicago Field Museum. But if you like dinosaurs (which I do) you can catch them in my previous posts of the outside Brachiosaurus, SUE the T. rex, and the other dinosaurs including Maximo. 

In this last post for the Field Museum, I wanted to provide a photo journal of the other paleontology features of the museum that I saw. These are obviously just my highlights. There is so much more to see than I could ever have hoped to include here.

Fish

This lovely Dunkleosteus placoderm armored fish skeleton is absolutely gorgeous. The Dunkleosteus was the largest predator alive during the Devonian period ~358 million years ago. The fish was up to 20 feet in length and weighed more than 1 ton. 

One of the truly WTF fossils ever is the Helicoprion tooth whirl. The shark lived during the Permian and has been found in various places in the US, including the one from Glass Mountain, Texas here. The artists reconstruction shown here is not the current version of what the shark likely looked like. It more likely contained the whirl within a sheath of flesh, giving it an oversized chin. But science is ever evolving.  

Turtles

Here is a great Trionyx, which is a soft-shelled turtle. This one was from the Late Cretaceous, ~67 million years old, from Montana.

Pterosaurs

Life sized reconstruction of a Quetzalcoatlus northropi (a name I still can't pronounce) from the Late Cretaceous

This may be a face only a mother could love. 

View of another Quetzalcoatlus reconstruction flying high overhead in the Stanley Field Hall

The pterosaur Rhamphorynchus muensteri from the Late Jurassic (~150 million years old) of Eichstatt, Germany. 

The pterosaur Pterodactylus antiquss from the Late Jurassic of Eichstatt, Germany. Gorgeous preservation in these two samples. You can see the fingers just popping out of this specimen. 

Early Synapsids (Mammal Relatives)

Two pelycosaur specimens. Edaphosaurusin the foreground (facing away from the camera) and Dimetrodon in the background (facing towards the camera). Although these animals are often listed as being dinosaurs, or even reptiles, they are neither. They are early synapsids, which are the ancestors to modern day mammals. 

Mammals

Please don't tap on the glass. It disrupts the animals in their native habitat.

A display illustrating how much two-horned rhino fossils have been found in western Nebraska. 

What I like to call, the pole dancing giant sloth. 

An Irish Elk, which also is not an elk, but a rather large member of the deer family.

Smilodon, otherwise known as the saber-toothed cat.

The mastodon Mammut americanum from the Pleistocene of the US. 

The woolly mammoth Mammuthus primigenius from the Pleistocene of Washington state.

It is sometimes really difficult to tell the difference between a mammoth and a mastodon. One of the key differences is their teeth. He is a display of the mastodon, the Asian elephant, and the woolly mammoth molars side by side for comparison.

I love skeletons a lot and I really love that some species of artiodactyls don't shed their "antlers" and some do (although they aren't called antlers then if they aren't shed). While most shed their antlers there are species like this Pronghorn Antelope here that instead of antlers it has bone core outgrowths like horns. 

Here you can see where the antlers would be shed. The growth pattern is distinctly different from the pronghorn. 

This is also probably one of my favorite shots of the mammals at the museum. Here is a warthog from front on. 

And the side, less dramatic view of the warthog.

Trace Fossils

One of my favorite trace fossil names ever, the Daemonelix, AKA the "Devil's Corkscrew". This is absolutely huge trace fossil that was formed by an extinct species of beaver burrowing down into its den. 

Other Items of Note

And the last category is of other items of note. 

This was back in August of 2016 so I don't know if the numbers have changed at all but it is a sobering number that keeps on ticking up and up and up.

An old fashioned Mold-A-Rama machine which will make you a toy as you wait.

And of course I waited! For my lovely little Triceratops figurine. 

Paleo in Pop Culture - Dinosaurs of the Chicago Field Museum

Beside just SUE, which we talked about in the previous post and the Brachiosaurus outside, the Chicago Field Museum has a ton of other fossils as well. I wanted to give a quick overview here of some of the great dinosaurs I saw through my tours in August of 2016 and April of 2019. While this post is about the dinosaurs of the Field Museum, I'll post the other fossils in a future post.

Maximo, the Patagotitan

The big dino in the room has to be Maximo the Patagotitan mayorum titanosaur. In April of 2019 when I visited, he was displayed in the main Stanley Field Hall after SUE had been moved to her own hall. Discovered in 2010, he is 122 feet long, 28 feet high, and estimated to have been 70 tons and is the largest dinosaur that scientists have ever described to date. Maximo was found in Patagonia, Argentina and is dated to 101.6 million years old, during the Cretaceous Period. 

Maximo from around head height on the second story overlook. Tiny humans for scale.

Almost a whole body shot of Maximo. Tiny humans for scale.

Maximo from below

The actual fossils of Maximo, with placement and bone identifications shown below.

Bone identifications and placements for Maximo shown above

Other Dinosaurs of the Museum

One of the earliest dinosaurs ever found, the 230 million year old Herrerasaurus from Argentina.

Protoceratops andrewsi from the Late Cretaceous Djadochta beds, Gobi Desert, Mongolia.

A series of ceratopsian skull. From right to left Protoceratops, Ancheceratops, and Triceratops. 

Cretaceous age Daspletosaurus from Alberta standing over a prone Lambeosaurus.

Apatosaurus excelsus. This mount is a combination of a few individuals with the hind end discovered by Elmer Riggs near Fruita, Colorado and a front end found by Edward Holt near Green River, Utah. 

Jurassic age Stegosaurus stenops from Wyoming

Triceratops horridus. The fossil is a combination of four different individuals from the Cretaceous of Wyoming and Montana.

Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus

A juvenile Maiasaura peeblesorum from the Late Cretaceous (~75 million years ago) of Montana.

References

https://www.fieldmuseum.org/exhibitions/maximo-titanosaur

https://www.fieldmuseum.org/blog/meet-sues-new-neighbors-hall-dinosaurs

https://extinctmonsters.net/tag/field-museum/

Paleo Bucket List - SUE the T. rex

I don't know if all paleontologists have this, but I know I certainly do: a Paleo Bucket List. A list of fossils, localities, or rock units that are so famous and revolutionary to the field of paleontology, geology, and/or biology that one must gaze upon them just once to full appreciate them. I was finally able to hit up one of my bucket list items when I was in Chicago in 2016, and then again to see the updated mount in 2019: 

Paleo Bucket List

SUE, the Tyrannosaurus rex

SUE (AKA FMNH PR 2081) is a difficult fossil to sum up quickly because so much has happened to her since she was discovered. And that's one of the reasons she has become a bucket list item, for her storied history.

SUE the T. rex in the field as discovered by Sue Hendrickson. Image was taken at the Field Museum.

SUE the T. rex was initially discovered by Sue Henderson, and named after her. After excavation, the fossil was determined to be 90% complete, far more complete than any other T. rex at the time and is still one of the most complete fossil T. rexes ever discovered. SUE was contentious because of where she was discovered and who owned the land that she was discovered on. In short, the Black Hills Institute (BHI) in South Dakota, of which Sue Hendrickson was a part of, discovered the T. rex on a ranch on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation. A dispute erupted over the ownership of the fossil between the BHI, the rancher Maurice Williams, and the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe.

This prompted the federal government to step in and claimed the fossil. Eventually, it was determined that the land under which the fossil was found on was tribal land, held in trust by the US Government. So the land owner, Maurice Williams, ended up with the fossil, under trust from the US Government. Williams was then granted leave by the US Government to sell the fossil through auction. The fossil was shipped to Sotheby's in NY and sold in 1997 for $8.36 million. The purchasing winner was the Chicago Field Museum with significant funding from the Walt Disney Company and McDonalds. SUE remains the most expensive fossil ever sold to this day. There have been several books, journal articles, and documentaries about the controversy surrounding SUE. Dinosaur 13 was one of the more popular recent documentaries from 2014, although after watching it, I had a sour taste in my mouth from the blatant bias against the US government. 

So, coming back to SUE. Back in August of 2016 when I visited the Field Museum, she was housed in the main Stanley Field Hall of the Field Museum. In this shot below you can see the reconstruction painting of SUE in the background up on the balcony. SUE's original skull was originally housed just below the painting. 

Mount of SUE the T. rex in August of 2016

Mount of SUE the T. rex in August of 2016

Mount of SUE the T. rex in August of 2016 from up above.

Then in 2018, SUE got a new home within the museum. She now has her own special exhibit. I was able to visit the new home in April of 2019.

Directions to SUE's new home within the Field Museum

SUE in her new home with lights capable of highlighting various portions of the skeleton during the automatic presentation that runs every few minutes.

SUE in her new home from the front. This space is a lot smaller, really emphasizing SUE's enormous size. 

Look how happy she is in her new home

SUE was discovered within the Hell Creek Formation and has been dated to being about 67 million years old. This makes her one of the last dinosaurs of the Mesozoic. She is 40.5 feet and 13 feet tall, has been determined to be ~28 years old when she died, and is estimated to have weighed around 9 tons. Besides being nearly complete, one of the really cool things about SUE is the entire reconstruction of the skull. When discovered and pieced back together, the skull of SUE was essentially squished (all of which happened after death and burial). The skull itself also weighs over 600 pounds, so a reconstruction was needed in order to just display the skull. Luckily the original skull is also displayed nearby in the current exhibit as well.

Forward view of the actual skull of SUE

A little more head-on view of the actual SUE skull

View of the left side of the actual SUE skull.

View of the remodeled SUE skull on the left side for comparison. 

There is also, to my immense delight, a SUE store!

 

Sign for the SUE Store

In exchange for putting up the cash to buy SUE, McDonalds and the Walt Disney Corporation both received models of SUE. You can see Disney's SUE model, down in Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World. 

SUE at Walt Disney World. Sorry for the darkness, I was only able to see her at night.

Another view of SUE in Walt Disney World

SUE's plaque at Walt Disney World.

References

https://www.livescience.com/29331-dinosaur-smuggling-cases-t-rex.html

https://singaporefossils.wordpress.com/2016/10/28/top-10-most-expensive-fossils/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40656-019-0288-4

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/kidspost/sue-the-t-rex-gets-new-home-at-chicago-museum/2018/12/20/a5a94bde-02e9-11e9-9122-82e98f91ee6f_story.html

https://www.fieldmuseum.org/blog/sue-t-rex

https://www.livescience.com/16524-rex-dinosaur-weighed.html

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sue