Susan Hendrickson (born December 2, 1949) is an American explorer and fossil collector. Hendrickson is best known for her discovery of the remains of a ''
Tyrannosaurus
''Tyrannosaurus'' is a genus of large theropoda, theropod dinosaur. The species ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' (''rex'' meaning "king" in Latin), often called ''T. rex'' or colloquially ''T-Rex'', is one of the best represented theropods. ''Tyrannosa ...
rex'' in
South Dakota
South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota people, Lakota and Dakota peo ...
on August 12, 1990 in the Cheyenne River Reservation. Her discovery is the most complete skeleton of ''Tyrannosaurus'' known to science. This skeleton is now known as "
Sue" in honor of her. It is on display at the
Field Museum
The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educational ...
in Chicago, Illinois. She has also found other important
fossils
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in ...
and
artifacts around the world.
Early life
Hendrickson was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Lee and Mary Hendrickson; her family soon moved to nearby
Munster, Indiana
Munster is a suburban town in North Township, Lake County, Indiana, United States. It is in the Chicago metropolitan area, approximately southeast of the Chicago Loop, and shares municipal boundaries with Hammond to the north, Highland to th ...
, where she grew up.
She has two siblings: an older brother, John,
and her younger sister, Karen. Her father was a successful railroad purchasing agent, while her mother worked at
American Airlines
American Airlines is a major airlines of the United States, major US-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is the Largest airlines in the world, largest airline in the world when measured ...
.
In 1955, Hendrickson was enrolled at Munster's public elementary school, frequently being praised by her teachers as "a good student and obedient child".
However, she eventually found herself bored with school in Munster, and at age 16 was able to convince her parents to let her stay with her aunt in Florida, where she enrolled at a
Fort Lauderdale
A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...
high school. 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.
A strong swimmer who had once been on her high school's swim team, Hendrickson quickly learned to dive and began collecting tropical fish off the
Florida Keys
The Florida Keys are a coral cay archipelago located off the southern coast of Florida, forming the southernmost part of the continental United States. They begin at the southeastern coast of the Florida peninsula, about south of Miami, and e ...
to sell to
aquarists
Fishkeeping is a popular hobby, practiced by aquarists, concerned with keeping fish in a home aquarium or garden pond. There is also a piscicultural fishkeeping industry, serving as a branch of agriculture.
Origins of fishkeeping
Fish have ...
and pet stores.
Aside from her work as a diver, Hendrickson also worked part of the year as a lobster fisherman, and would occasionally take the summer off to volunteer on paleontological digs. She later moved to
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
, earned her
GED
The General Educational Development (GED) tests are a group of four subject tests which, when passed, provide certification that the test taker has United States or Canadian high school-level academic skills. It is an alternative to the US high ...
, and considered enrolling at the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...
in order to pursue a
marine biology
Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms in the sea. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies s ...
degree, but decided against it, leaving Seattle after a year and moving back to Florida to pursue her diving career.
Career
In 1963, Hendrickson had a large circle of friends in the diving business, and one day was invited to participate in a
salvage diving
Salvage diving is the diving work associated with the recovery of all or part of ships, their cargoes, aircraft, and other vehicles and structures which have sunk or fallen into water. In the case of ships it may also refer to repair work done to m ...
expedition off the Florida Keys, which she eagerly undertook. Her job was to retrieve valuable building materials that were stored in a cargo freighter which ran aground on a
coral reef
A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, whose polyps cluster in groups.
Co ...
.
While continuing her work in salvage, Hendrickson soon found herself exploring old shipwrecks, later going to the
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares wit ...
. She was fascinated by working in the company of archaeologists and fell in love with the country, visiting the island often.
By the mid-1980s, Hendrickson had also attempted mining
amber
Amber is fossilized tree resin that has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects."Amber" (2004). In Ma ...
in the Dominican mountains. She had become one of the largest amber providers for scientists. Hendrickson also found three perfect 23-million-year-old butterflies, which make up a half of the whole world's total collection. Although she found the work too monotonous to pursue full-time, writing that "You could dig for months and find nothing in the Dominican caves,"
she continued studying
paleo entomology, becoming an expert at identifying fossilized insects.
![Sues skeleton](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Sues_skeleton.jpg)
She also met Swiss paleontologist Kirby Siber, who allowed her to join his team consisting of paleontologists Carlos Martin and
Peter Larson
Peter Lars Larson (born 1952) is an American fossil expert and president of the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research. He led the team that excavated " Sue", one of the largest and most complete specimen of ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' found to ...
.
The group began excavating
Miocene
The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recen ...
baleen whale
Baleen whales (systematic name Mysticeti), also known as whalebone whales, are a parvorder of carnivorous marine mammals of the infraorder Cetacea (whales, dolphins and porpoises) which use keratinaceous baleen plates (or "whalebone") in their ...
fossils at an ancient seabed in Peru, and Hendrickson joined the team for several summers, discovering fossilized dolphins, seals, and sharks.
She later accompanied Larson to the
Black Hills Institute
The Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, Inc. (BHI) is a private corporation specializing in the excavation and preparation of fossils, as well as the sale of both original fossil material and museum-quality replicas. Founded in 1974 and b ...
in South Dakota. By this time, paleontology had become her main passion.
On August 12, 1990, while examining a cliff-side in South Dakota with a team from the Black Hills Institute, she discovered a ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' specimen – the largest, most complete, and best preserved ''T. rex'' ever found. The specimen was later named "Sue" in her honor.
In 1992, Hendrickson joined a team of marine
archaeologists
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
headed by
Franck Goddio
Franck Goddio (born 1947 in Casablanca, Morocco) is a French underwater archaeologist who, in 2000, discovered the city of Thonis-Heracleion 7 km off the Egyptian shore in Aboukir Bay. He led the excavation of the submerged site of Canopus a ...
. With them, she took part in many diving expeditions, the most notable of which were the Royal Quarters of
Cleopatra
Cleopatra VII Philopator ( grc-gre, Κλεοπάτρα Φιλοπάτωρ}, "Cleopatra the father-beloved"; 69 BC10 August 30 BC) was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler.She was also a ...
, and
Napoleon Bonaparte's lost fleet from the
Battle of the Nile
The Battle of the Nile (also known as the Battle of Aboukir Bay; french: Bataille d'Aboukir) was a major naval battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the Navy of the French Republic at Aboukir Bay on the Mediterranean coast off the ...
.
In 2005,
''Glamour'' magazine honored her in their "Glamour Woman of the Year Awards". In 2010, she published an autobiography entitled ''Hunt for the Past: My Life as an Explorer'' (New York, NY: Scholastic, Inc). In 2008, she was featured on the "Dare to Explore" chapter of ''
National Geographic Kids
''National Geographic Kids'' (often nicknamed to ''Nat Geo Kids'') is a children's magazine published by the National Geographic Society. Its first issue was printed in September 1975 under the original title ''National Geographic World'' (whic ...
''.
Hendrickson now lives on the island of
Guanaja
Guanaja is one of the Bay Islands of Honduras and is in the Caribbean. It is about off the north coast of Honduras, and from the island of Roatan. One of the cays off Guanaja, also called Guanaja or Bonacca or Low Cay (or just simply, The Ca ...
, off the coast of
Honduras
Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...
. She is a member of the
Paleontological Society
The Paleontological Society, formerly the Paleontological Society of America, is an international organisation devoted to the promotion of paleontology. The Society was founded in 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland, and was incorporated in April 1968 in ...
,
Explorers Club
The Explorers Club is an American-based international multidisciplinary professional society with the goal of promoting scientific exploration and field study. The club was founded in New York City in 1904, and has served as a meeting point fo ...
,
Society for Historical Archaeology The Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA) is a professional organization of scholars concerned with the archaeology of the modern world (15th century-present). Founded in 1967, the SHA promotes scholarly research and the dissemination of knowledg ...
, and was awarded an
honorary Ph.D. from the
University of Illinois at Chicago
The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a Public university, public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side, Chicago, Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus esta ...
in 2000.
References
;Footnotes
;Bibliography
*
*
"Dinosaur discoverer trusts intuition"',
The Oprah Winfrey Show
''The Oprah Winfrey Show'', often referred to as ''The Oprah Show'' or simply ''Oprah'', is an American daytime broadcast syndication, syndicated talk show that aired nationally for 25 seasons from September 8, 1986, to May 25, 2011, in Chicag ...
.
*
"Ask a Dinosaur Expert"', an interview with Sue Hendrickson conducted by
Scholastic Press
Scholastic Corporation () is an American multinational publishing, education, and media company that publishes and distributes books, comics, and educational materials for schools, parents, and children. Products are distributed via retail and on ...
* ''Dinosaur Named Sue (2003), Bt Bound. . Sue hendrickson
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hendrickson, Sue
American paleontologists
People from Chicago
1949 births
Living people
Women paleontologists
People from Munster, Indiana
American explorers