In a welcoming reception fit for a global celebrity, the Museum of the Rockies opened their doors on Friday February 7th, to the traveling exhibit “ Sue the T. Rex Experience”.
Sue was named after the paleontologist who discovered the bones in 1990 in South Dakota. The skeleton has been on display at the Field Museum in Chicago since 2000.
Peter Graf, a paleontology student at MSU, is also from Chicago and remembers seeing the dinosaur on display in his hometown, but was thrilled about some new components of the traveling exhibit now on display in Bozeman.
“They have the life size model, it’s both really impressive when you walk right in, and there’s a lot of good science behind it,” Graf said.
The fully-fleshed out model stands about 14 feet tall, 42 feet long and comes complete with prey in its mouth.
Museum of the Rockies Director of Exhibitions Scott Williams says the exhibit was a natural fit.
“The Story of Sue in South Dakota is the story of tyrannosaurs here in Montana,” Williams said.
Sue lived about 67 million years ago and their bones were preserved in the Hell Creek Formation, which also runs through Montana, and is where much of Museum of the Rockies' collection came from.
“We have the largest Tyrannosaur collection in the world and so there's some of our Tyrannosaur material in there, real fossils and some of our Triceratops fossils,” Williams said.
The exhibit pairs real bones, computer-generated imaging videos and something for every sense.
“If you're brave enough, there’s even a smell station where you can smell what Sue’s breath would have been like,” Williams said.
The interactive experience incorporates the growing knowledge of the life of this dinosaur, including that the dino was probably 33 years old when they died, and suffered arthritis in their tail.
“Each one of these stories, even Sue's story, is just one page out of a giant volume,” Williams said.
Sue is on display at MOR until September 7th. The Museum is open daily from 9 to 5.
