Dinosaur 13 Page #2

picks and shovels,

to dig down that 30 feet

from where I thought

we could get back

into the cliff face

far enough to uncover

what I thought

would be the limits

of that skeleton.

Probably the hardest work

I've ever had to do in my life.

We were doing this all

in temperatures around

115 degrees every day.

It was very hard work,

but it was very easy

to put in a lot

of energy into it,

because we all wanted to see

what the skeleton

was going to look like.

Basically, we'd take

different sections

so we weren't

in each other's way

and just kind of worked

the specimen

until we could start

removing bones.

You know, and every time

somebody found a bone

or fragments,

they just said, "the S bone."

We wouldn't say, "Skull."

We didn't want to jinx it.

Pretty early on,

I hit something hard, and so,

I stopped.

"It's the 'S' word," I said,

thinking,

"I bet I hit the skull."

When I got down digging

and then started really working

with the smaller knife,

we found, as we were going down,

is the back of the skull.

And we're getting down,

and here's this skull

taking shape,

and we get out on the side,

and I put Terry to work

on cleaning

the side of the skull,

'cause he's really

our best preparator.

Pete let me work

on part of the skull

in the field,

which was amazing.

He's working and uncovering

the teeth one by one by one.

It was spectacular.

Teeth like this

just sticking

right out of the skull.

We're going, "Oh, my God.

Look at this thing.

Look how huge it is.

This has gotta be

bigger than the one

at the American Museum.

It's huge. It's wonderful."

We had started a long time ago

naming particular dinosaurs,

and the name Sue,

for Susan Hendrickson,

goes down in history,

and I think that's

a kind of a cool way

to reward those amateurs

who make these discoveries.

We were all

experienced diggers.

You know, it was just

total focused effort.

We would just

work into the specimen,

remove things that we could,

protect the rest of it,

and then take it

out of the ground

and get it back

into the laboratory,

where you can have a more

controlled environment

to take care of the specimen.

The amount of new things

that we found and the amount

of scientific information

that we discovered

while finding Sue was enormous.

Beautifully preserved

articulated skull,

articulated vertebral column

up to the pelvis with the tail

and shoulder blade

and all this stuff,

and it's just like, "Holy cow."

And wonderful preservation.

Just fantastic bones

that were just

beautiful surface on them.

Every time we were ready

to take a bone out or every time

there was some new discovery,

Pete would take

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