Poor Sue.
First, the Field Museum’s T. rex superstar got the boot from the main hall. Now, the museum has brought in a dino river monster that’s bigger and badder than the 65 million-year-old carnivore.
The museum plans to unveil a cast of a Spinosaurus on June 3 in Stanley Field Hall. It is 46 feet long — 4 feet longer than Sue — with a crocodilelike snout and a paddlelike tail.
“These features helped make Spinosaurus a fearsome semiaquatic predator in the rivers of northern Africa, where it roamed 95 million years ago,” the museum said in a statement.
The Field will be the only place in the Western Hemisphere to see the world’s “largest predatory dinosaur.”
The cast, built in Italy, was created from fossils found in the Sahara Desert and housed in Hassan II University in Morocco’s famed city of Casablanca.
“Since the cast is lightweight compared with real fossil material, we’ll be able to display it hung from the ceiling to greet visitors as they enter the museum, posed mid-swim, so museumgoers can gaze up at Spinosaurus like its prey might have 95 million years ago,” according to the museum.
To celebrate Spinosaurus’ arrival, the museum plans to host “Dino Fest” from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. June 10 in Stanley Field Hall. The fest will feature “dinosaur trivia games, a poetry station, a book fair and presentations from the Field’s dinosaur curator Jingmai O’Connor and paleo-artist Ted Rechlin.
