“Sue looks fantastic here in the Stanley Field Hall,” Mandrell said. Joseph Mandrell will travel with the creature, setting it up in each new location and disassembling it to move onto the next museum, a process he said he anticipates will take less than a day to complete. After that, it’ll be shipped across the country and world as a part of a traveling exhibit. “Sue in the Flesh” will be at the Field Museum until Aug. “It’s slightly graphic, but the kids are not as scared as I thought they would be.” “It’s pretty incredible,” Megan Hood said. Megan and Ryan Hood brought their three children, ages 7, 5 and 2, to the Field Museum Thursday because it was on the family’s bucket list before they move from their Sauganash home. “Its calf muscle is as big as I am.” Megan and Ryan Hood of Sauganash look at “Sue in the Flesh” with their three children, ages 7, 5 and 2. “It’s amazing how big it is,” Miller said.
Miller saw the structure as it was being constructed, but seeing it in its complete form was an entirely different way of experiencing Sue, he said. The model uses dense foam and a fiberglass shell to bring the bones to life.
Using a miniature 3D print of Sue’s skeleton, “Sue in the Flesh” took roughly a year to make, said Ben Miller, an exhibition developer at the Field Museum.
It’s still up for debate whether Sue would have had scaly skin or been covered in feathers, but Simpson said fossils that have been uncovered lead experts to imagine the dinosaur without feathers. Clare Proctor/Sun-Times A scar above Sue’s left ankle could be from a Triceratops or Ankylosaurus, said Bill Simpson, head of geological collections at the museum. Scars on Sue’s nose and throughout its body match markings found on the bones of its skeleton. Just above the dinosaur’s left ankle is a scar experts guess caused a bone infection and was the result of Sue being rammed by a Triceratops or battered by the clubbed tail of an Ankylosaurus, said Bill Simpson, head of geological collections at the museum. “Sue in the Flesh” was created at Blue Rhino Studio in Minnesota and matches the exact dimensions and details of Sue’s skeletal counterpart, including scars and scratches. The Edmontosaurus was probably a popular part of a Tyrannosaurus rex’s diet, experts say. The life-size model prominently features a replica baby Edmontosaurus in its mouth.
The 40-foot-long, 14-foot-tall “Sue in the Flesh” exhibit was unveiled at the museum’s Stanley Field Hall Thursday. Now, museum-goers can walk up to a life-size model of what Sue would have looked like when alive. For two decades, Sue has drawn dinosaur lovers to the Field Museum so they can catch a glimpse of the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever discovered.