Sue has a new home - part one about some new dinosaur displays

The world’s most famous tyrannosaur has a new home…well, maybe not a new home per-say as the fossils are still housed at Chicago’s Field Museum (FM), but it is now part of a new exhibition – one the designers were determined would reunite all the dinosaurs remains, as previously they were displayed in various locations throughout the FM.

I was lucky enough to be part of the FM’s staff event, were the new display was explained to us in detail (and why I believe I’m providing a lot more background information) and the recent Sue media event, when the world’s media got an early look and the chance to film and report on the display before its opening to the public.

Sue vs the Field Museum's massive foyer.

After receiving a substantial donation from the Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund, the FM set about renovating its prehistoric displays. The first part was moving Sue from the museums’ cathedral like foyer, then replacing the tyrannosaur with a dinosaur that would fit inside this space. Enter Maximo, the Patagotitan replacement for Sue that now dominates this hall.

Yup, Maximo will fit nicely here!

Next, after decades of work looking for fossils in Antarctica, the FM used part of this donation to create the Antarctica Dinosaur display that is about to finish its short-term run-in Chicago and head out to museums across the world.

And now one of the last parts has been completed (and well ahead of schedule I should point out) with the new Sue exhibition being opened to the public this Friday (the 21^st of December).

The display is terrific, with a visitor entering through a Cretaceous forest into the exhibition proper, which has been laid out in a strange chronological order. The first fossils you see are containers filled with the tiny pieces of bones that Sue Hendrickson first saw lying on the ground back in 1990. It was by following the trail of these tiny pieces into the nearby cliff-face that led Sue to discovering more bones weathering out of the South Dakota soil.

On the wall following has been reprinted the actual charts of how the tyrannosaur was mapped as it lay in the ground. These have not just been reprinted but slightly enhanced as many of the original pencil lines were faint and had faded with age. Not only are they interesting and part of the story, they are also artworks in their own right and deserve their place within the exhibit.

This is also a great place to check out something that one might not notice during your first visit…the carpet. To show you the clever way the designers have approached this new display, they had even looked at the flooring and designed it to resemble the sort of lichen that would be found on the rocks of the region…Lichen carpet…amazing.

This ‘room’ also contains Sue’s original skull. As this is one of the most studied fossils in the world (as well as being large and fragile), it was decided early on the skull would be placed in a cabinet where visiting paleontologists can always have access to it, rather than mounting it on the rest of the skeleton. With the skull are several loose tyrannosaur teeth, and one clever little feature, a mirrored floor to the cabinet. This allows visitors to see inside the skull at the various features that are almost always hidden from sight with other similar displays.

What looks like a wall with a mural is actually a print that, on closer inspection is see through. This means if the lighting is right you can see the Sue skeleton shining through the print and matches up perfectly with the T. rex art work (which I believe was created by Velizar Simeonovski – though I will change this if I’m wrong).

On the other side of the screen is the rest of Sue, remounted and looking fabulous. Listed below are the many changes to the dinosaur’s stance since its move:

•  Gastralia. These ‘belly-ribs’ are not actually part of the ribcage but are more like the bottom armour seen on turtles. These are rarely displayed, and Sue’s have never been associated with the actual skeleton (previously they were in their own display case one floor above the old exhibit). 
• Right leg. The original display had Sue stepping up onto a ledge, which looked somewhat dramatic but actually meant the right leg was out of position (the knee would have been dislocated when alive). The move meant this issue could be fixed, and Sue’s right leg is now in a far more life-like position.
  
• Wishbone. Sue was famous for being one of the first T. rex’s to have an identified wishbone, yet recently the opinion has grown that this bone was actually a stray rib from further back near the legs. Wishbones on other specimens have been found since Sue was put together, and this led to another bone being identified as the correct fossil.
• Jaw. Though originally not hung incorrectly, the lower jaw has been slung a lot lower. This has given Sue a much larger gape, creating a far more fearsome visage.
• Shoulders. Both shoulder blades were brought forward and lowered, (jokingly) this means Sue could clap (note- this is not my joke but paleontologist Pete Makovicky’s during our training….so blame him :P ) .
• Ribcage. The rearrangement of the shoulders meant many other things were changed, including the ribs, which were hung with a greater angle. Previously they were hung horizontally.

The new jewel of this exhibit however is the light and sound show that triggers roughly every 15 minutes or so. The lights in the entire room fall, a spot light hits Sue’s skull, creating a Jurassic Park logo like image, which then comes alive.

The narrator then goes on to explain a lot about the biology of Sue and many of the visible features, and as it does the specific items mentioned (healed ribs, eye sight etc) are highlighted in one of the cleverest fossil shows I have ever seen. There are similar displays for other dinosaurs (such as the mummified Leonardo at the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis), but nothing this well done. 

https://www.facebook.com/phil.hore/videos/10217168250495154/

Around Sue are a number of stations with touch screen displays and many of the dinosaur’s fossils cast in bronze for visitors to touch.

Behind the tyrannosaur hang a number of panels, roughly 10ft apart that, when you stand in a certain spot line up to create a solid wall. 

This is the video part of the display, where three different mini-movies play revealing much of Sue’s life story. One is Sue hunting a herd of hadrosaurs, with the actual eating done conveniently off-screen so as not to disturb younger visitors. 

https://www.facebook.com/phil.hore/videos/10217168378698359/

Another is a possible explanation of how Sue received that horrible leg wound that was likely the cause of death after it grew infected. A feeding triceratops is attacked by Sue, thrilling so many of us who grew up with these two eternal enemies fighting it out in our sandboxes in plastic dinosaur form when we were kids. The Triceratops, however, proves to be more than a match for poor ol’ Sue, who receives a nasty wound to the leg.

https://www.facebook.com/phil.hore/videos/10217172914331747/

Finally Sue walks up to a carcass of an ankylosaur, takes a mouthful of meat, takes a drink from the nearby river and then does a big ol’ poo right in front of everyone – triggering the 5 year old within all of us to giggle. Sue then walks right up to the ‘camera’, looks out at the audience and gives us the evil eye, as though saying ‘what are you looking at?’

https://www.facebook.com/phil.hore/videos/10217173016654305/

These screens are a clever feature and reveal the depths of forethought that went into this new exhibit. The area is not the largest, and the designers understood the display would be visited by large numbers, so creating a wall that is in fact no wall at all, takes up virtually no space and allows people to walk around and through is simply brilliant.

Behind the screens is another dinosaur - that’s correct, its not all about Sue here. The FM’s Triceratops skull sits in its new home, and looks the better for it. Not only has it been raised to eye height, somehow this has made the thing look bigger than its previous home in the FM’s dinosaur hall. There is also a terrific photo here showing how this skull was found in 1904, and you can see it in situ.

Behind this is a wide display of many of the fossils that were either found alongside Sue or are known to have lived at the same time – evidence of the world this tyrannosaur lived in.

There are plant fossils, pterosaur bones and a few more dinosaur remains.

One is the skullcap of a pachycephalosaur, another the armoured scute of an ankylosaur, and their presence explains why both herbivores are featured in the Sue videos.  

Also sitting serenely in the middle of this display here are two neat little fossils; a bone from a juvenile T.rex.

 Next to this is a partial fossil from another theropod, Anzu wyliei, the infamous ‘chicken from hell’.

The display opens to the public on Friday 21^st December 2018 – and numbers are expected to be so high for the first two weeks that entry will be ticketed (free with normal entry). Safety requirements only permit a certain amount of people in the room at the one time, so to ensure this when visitors to the FM arrive, they will be given a ticket with THEIR time stamped on it for their entry. 

These will be limited in number, so my suggestion is either wait a few weeks or get to the museum early to ensure you can get in. To make sure those who cannot get a ticket can still see Sue, there is a side window where the public can still get a look at the world’s most famous tyrannosaur, but this is not the way you want to see the exhibit- so ARRIVE EARLY!

 

A special Bone Rooms - Brachiosaurus and the First World War

Tendaguru in Tanzania

On the Centenary of the guns falling silent and ending the First World War I want to share this strange moment in paleontology.

Prussia was the last European superpower to enter the colonization game, and so began sending out explorers to take possession of the few remaining regions on the world map that didn’t already have a European flag flying over it.

Tendaguru image from an early German Expedition

One such explorer was W.B. Sattler, a German geologist who’d been searching East Africa for precious stones. While investigating a nasty little place called Tendaguru (in German Tanzania) he literally tripped over a large boulder and, muttering some colourful and highly descriptive German words that I can’t repeat here, Sattler picked himself up, dusted himself off, and noticed the boulder was in fact a giant bone.

upper leg bone of Brachiosaurus 

Reporting his find to the local Prussian governor (called Wendt), Sattler’s account somehow got into the hands of Professor Eberhard Frass, head the Stuttgart Natural History Museum and one of the few men in Africa at the time interested in such fossils.

Both men returned to Tendaguru and quickly unearthed several large bones, but before any serious excavating could be done Frass fell ill and was forced to return to Berlin. Once home he tapped into Germany’s growing national pride by calling on his fellow Prussians to travel to Africa and retrieve the fossils. He argued they simply couldn’t allow the bones to just lay there and be destroyed without becoming the laughing stock of Europe.

Wilhelm von Branca

The ploy worked! Wilhelm von Branca, head of the Berlin Museum of Natural History, soon had scientific institutions, the city of Berlin, the Prussian Ministry for Culture, the Imperial government and a long list of rich benefactors throwing fists of money at them to organise a dig. There has never been a better financed paleontological excavation than Germany’s Tendaguru expedition!

Werner Janensch in Tendaguru

Werner Janensch, Hans von Staff and Edwin Hennig would be sent to work the dig, while Wollf Furtwängler, son of the world famous archaeologist Adolf Furtwängler (who’d been with Heinrich Schliemann at Olympia in Greece), was hired to help with the Africans as he’d worked on nearby plantations, so knew a few local dialects.

Tendaguru suffers from torrential rains, scorching droughts, energy sapping heat, lions, and is literally riddled with flies, mosquitoes and ticks carrying an assorted number of fatal diseases. This meant no pack animals could be used to travel to and from the remote area, instead everything, including water, had to be carried by the locals - the only people with any sort of immunity to the region. At first the expedition had 170 such porters, but this number soon ballooned to over 500, which led to a small tent city being built to house them all.

Still, even with all its problems, Tendaguru proved to be a rich site, the equal to anything found anywhere in the world, with Henning alone finding over fifty stegosaurs called Kentrosaurus.

Over several seasons the Germans shipped nearly 1000 crates containing some 235 tonnes of rock out of Tendaguru, all of which had to be hand carried out on a five day trek. These fossils would take almost 25 years to clean and display, with one vertebra alone requiring 450 hours to prepare. 

From this location were fossils of pterosaurs, reptiles, mammals and the dinosaur species, Dicraeosaurus, Australodocus, Janenschia, Tendaguria, Tornieria, Ceratosaurus, Elaphrosaurus, Ostafrikasaurus, Veterupristisaurus, Dysalotosaurus, Kentrosaurus, and of course the largest dinosaur ever found at that time, Brachiosaurus (today renamed Giraffatitan), many of which can be seen on display in Berlin (below).

Hans Reck

After three tours into Tendaguru, Janensch was tired and headed home. Taking his place was a young palaeontologist called Hans Reck, who barely arrived before the First World War started.

As the conflict spread out of Europe to the rest of the world, in East Africa the German scientists found themselves under siege, surrounded by the British, French, Portuguese, Belgians and South Africans. Most joined the German African army under the command of Colonel Paul Erich von Lettow-Vorbeck, whose army was made up of mostly native conscripts (Deutsche Ost-Afrika Gesellschaft). This meant most German citizens in the region were quickly promoted into the officer ranks. This African army would only field around 20,000 men during the entire conflict, while against them marched nearly ¼ of a million troops.

Hans Von Staff would use his geology skills to find water for the army, while Bernhard Sattler organised and led native Askaris. Hans Reck, along with two Europeans and ten native soldiers, organised the local Wagogo people into something of a fighting force at Ufiome. Ever the palaeontologist, Reck would also unearth some prehistoric elephant remains (Elephas antiquus) as he helped organise and supply the main German garrison in east Africa. Here he was joined by geologists Erich Krenkel and Gustav Schulze, who’d been on their way to work in Olduvai Gorge but had been caught up in the war before they could start a dig.

During these dangers days Reck feared he would lose his fossils if captured, especially some pterosaur remains (the first found in Africa), so he handed his specimens to a neutral Swiss friend, F.G. Ricki, for safekeeping.

As for Werner Janensch - the palaeontologist who prepared and described Berlin’s world famous Brachiosaurus - he enlisted in the Zeppelin service. Does anyone else find it a weird coincidence that the discoverer of the largest complete dinosaur skeleton helped fly the world’s largest vehicles ever to take to the air?

One of these zeppelins was linked to one of the more bizarre and tragic stories of the First World War. The German African army was starving and out of ammunition, so in an attempt to break the allied blockade strangling Germany, a 226 m long zeppelin (L-59) - nicknamed das Afrika-Schiff (the Africa Ship) - was organised to simply float over the heads of everyone and supply the desperate army.

das Afrika-Schiff, zeppelin L-59

On board was 50 tons of provisions, including weapons, ammunition, food and extra personal. As zeppelins need hydrogen to stay airborne (which wasn’t readily available in Africa at the time) the mission was planned to be a one-way trip, with the zeppelin itself being added to the supply list at the other end. Its frame and balloon skin were designed to be used for constructing towers, tents and bandages.

The journey of L-59

However, as L-59 was crossing the Mediterranean,it was caught in an electrical storm and lost its radio, one engine and almost crashed until those on-board started jettisoning the valuable equipment and buoyancy was restored. The plucky airship then continued to bob along, and later criticism of its crews actions during the storm (as those had been much needed supplies they had thrown out) was easily deflected when it was proved that the men, who’d been suffering migraines and hallucinations during the voyage, had been continuously poisoned by the very gas keeping them afloat.

Eventually some wisenheimer (that’s a German word isn’t it?) repaired the radio as the dirigible soared over Khartoum. Almost immediately came an order crackling through the ships speakers for the airship to return home as the German army in Africa had already surrendered.

I dare say having made a round-trip of nearly 7,000 km (a long standing record by the way), L-59's captain was a little surprised when he returned to Germany and everyone started asking why he’d come back? It turns out the recall message was a British trick as no order had ever been issued by the Prussian high command. What should have given it away was the order was given in English (citation needed as I have no idea if this is true or not :) - though there are reports that a transcript of the radio message has been found in German archives and the files of the British Public Records office).

Back in Africa the German paleo-army continued to fight with little more than rocks and baboons, while L-59 was sent to bomb the city of Naples (which it somehow missed). It was last seen plummeting to earth in a ball of fire by infamous German U-boat, UB-53, who claimed she’d been shot down while trying to bomb Malta. There are rumours, however, it was actually UB-53 who shot down the Zeppelin, perhaps mistaking it for an Italian dirigible, as they were an allied nation during the First World War and the only other country that used the balloons as bombers.

UB-53 at sea

UB-53 had become famous when it sailed into Newport harbour (Rhode Island) on the 7th of October 1916. Her captain (Hans Rose) later paid a visit to American admirals, Austin M Knight and Albert Gleaves, on-board the USS Birmingham. The admirals then later return the favour by visiting Rose and the UB-53. There was such a friendly atmosphere between the two groups that Gleaves even brought his family for the tour.

UB-53 in Newport harbour, Rhode Island

Rose only left America when he heard talk about the US interring his ship - choosing to simply sail away before such an action could be taken. He then stationed himself off the American coastline and started sinking allied ships left, right and centre. UB-53 would even stop the American steamer Kansan, but released the ship when an inspection proved she carried no contraband cargo. The same could not be said for the British Strathdene, the Norwegian Christian Knutsen and the West Point, which were all sunk with their cargo of goods bound for England and her allies. Rose had removed the crews of these ships first - he even allowed passenger steamers to pass as he knew he could only sink them by risking civilian lives, which he refused to do.

The American navy was aware of what was happening off their shore and sent 17 warships, not to destroy the U-boat, but to help in rescue operations. The USS Ericcson would be on station and watched as UB-53 sank the Dutch Blommersdyk and British passenger liner Stephano, and never lifted a finger to stop it. The Ericcson did rush in though and remove the crew and passengers before retreating and allowing the U-boat to sink both ships and sail away.

Now I know America wasn’t officially at war with Germany, but couldn’t they have stopped these sinkings? They could have done anything, positioned themselves between predator and prey and dared the German warship to fire on an American naval vessel, or stall the U-boat long enough for the three British warships they knew were steaming from Canada to arrive…or better yet, have rammed the bloody thing and saved all the hassle?

As it turns out they should have acted while they had the U-boat under their guns as UB-53 would later become the first German to sink a US warship. When Amarice finally joined the war against Germany the USS Jacob Jones would also be the first US destroyer ever lost to enemy action. She went down after being torpedoed when her compliment of depth charges exploded, killing two officers and sixty-four men.

UB-53 would sink 80 ships, including several American vessels, throughout the entire war…and possibly one zeppelin as well!

Back in Africa, what was left of the German army invaded Rhodesia...sadly after the war had officially ended. When this news arrived the Germans quickly surrendered and went into prisoner of war camps. Here a large number of them died from the Spanish influenza outbreak that ravaged a wold that had already suffered so much after the war. One happy end to this story is that the German government paid these native troops a pension well into the 1960’s. 

Germany lost all her her colonies during the war, while the conflict continued to cause suffering for years among the African communities that had so little to begin with and had lost so much. After their men, animals and crops had been stolen from them at will, droughts ravaged the continent, along with the many diseases carried by all those thousands of soldiers and pack animals that had rampaged across the continent... and what of our palaeontologists?

Frass never returned to Africa as the sickness that had struck him down turned out to be Amoebic dysentery, which continued to eat away at his body until he was a shell of his former self. He died four days after his son was killed on the Western Front!

Hans Reck would fall ill, was captured and spent two years in an Egyptian prisoner of war camp. He should have become world famous for his discovery of the first significant human fossils at Olduvai Gorge, yet this glory would fall on a young Rhodesian anthropologist who’d been employed by the new lords of Tendaguru, the British, as he could speak several local dialects.

Louis Leakey joined a hauntingly similar effort to the Germans when the British also collected a large amount of money through donations and selected a Canadian palaeontologist called William E. Cutler to dig the site. This expedition also ended in tragedy as, ignoring Leakey’s warnings about the dangers of malaria and other disease born by the insects of the region, Cutler refused to sleep under a net and died with six months of his arrival.

Leaky would go on to fame and glory for his Olduvai Gorge discoveries, while Reck is all but forgotten, dying in 1936 while travelling to Tanganyika to examine a new human skull found there. As for the fossils he had hidden for protection, many would never been seen again!

Janensch and Henning had also become ‘kriegsgeolge’ (war geologists) during the conflict, with Janensch winning an Iron Cross 2^nd grade. Both returned to palaeontology after the war.

Wollf Furtwängler had arrived missing much of his equipment, including his bedding and mosquito nets. While sleeping in a grass hut he was bitten by ticks and fell gravely ill. He was sent to nearby Lindi to recover, only to walk all the way back when he began feeling a little better. This move destroyed his health forever and he was sent home, never to return to Tendaguru either.

Former governor Wendt was killed after leading his small force of natives to push the invading Portuguese out of the German territory. Hans von Staff died drilling boreholes to supply the African army with water as it crossed the Namibian desert. He had been suffering from Typhus, and became so exhausted trying to save his men that he could no longer fight off the disease.

Bernhard Sattler - who’d originally found the fossil site - was killed in 1915 when he tried to stop one of his own drunken troops from looting. Apparently the rest of his Askari captured the murderer and put him to a very slowly death, a sure sign of how much the Africans had respected the geologist.

The Berlin Museum's East African fossils proved to be the best survivors from these expedition. Even though it took decades to prepare them, and had cost the lives of almost everyone involved, while all around them was destroyed they alone seem to have survived the allied bombing of Berlin during the Second World War . Allied commanders it turns out had been asked to try and avoid damaging the buildings storing them, which astonishingly they did. This of course was not true for other African fossils found and stored in Germany, with most famously the Spinosaurus fossils from Egypt (found and described by Ernst Stromer in 1915) were destroyed "during the night of 24/25 April 1944 in a British bombing raid of Munich". 

All we have left of the original Spinosaur fossils are images like this