CHICAGO - Dinosaur fever struck Chicago yesterday as the Field Museum unveiled the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex fossil yet found - a 12.5m monster that lumbered the Great Plains 67 million years ago.
The crowd packing an exhibit hall at the lakefront museum broke into applause as a curtain fell and
the creature named "Sue" emerged in a swirl of smoke, music and spotlights, perched in a threatening crouch, head cocked menacingly.
The museum said 10,000 people came to gawk at the exhibit in the first few hours after it opened, and steady crowds were expected.
The event was carried live on the Internet at the museum's Website and the museum scheduled a daylong series of Webcasts.
It also said the creature - which it bought for $US8.4 million ($17.8 million) in an auction - had provided some scientific surprises about the ferocious species during a nearly three-year reassembly bone-by-bone.
One was the presence of a wishbone, the first found in a T rex and additional proof for those who believe dinosaurs are related to birds. The wishbone is a structure unique to fowl.
In addition, the fossil is the first of a T rex found with an ear-drum bone called a stapes - also found in birds - that helps to transmit sound to the inner ear.
"This delicate ear bone is almost never preserved in dinosaur fossils," said John Flynn, head of the museum's geology department.
"Its presence allows us to better understand the evolution of ear bones and hearing in dinosaurs and in birds."
Experts said Sue probably walked at a relatively slow gait - about 9.6 km/h - with a top speed of perhaps 24.1 km/h.
This was slower than some scientists had earlier thought but it would have been swifter than the pace of other species roaming the land.
The animal also had a keen sense of smell thanks to huge olfactory lobes, leading experts to believe it may have moved through life "nose first," but shedding no light on whether it was a predator or a scavenger.
Of the 20 or so other T rex skeletons that had been put together around the world, this one - at about 90 per cent - was the most complete, the museum said.
The fossil was found in 1990 in a cliff in South Dakota by explorer Sue Hendrickson.
First indications led experts to believe the T rex was female, and it was named after Hendrickson. Now that it has been assembled, however, paleontologists are not certain of the sex.
They believe, however, that the creature weighed about seven tonnes.
The dinosaur's head was replaced with a plastic replica in the assembly because the real thing weighed too much. The actual head - 1.5m long - is displayed separately at floor level where visitors can stare it in the eyes.
- REUTERS
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CHICAGO - Dinosaur fever struck Chicago yesterday as the Field Museum unveiled the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex fossil yet found - a 12.5m monster that lumbered the Great Plains 67 million years ago.
The crowd packing an exhibit hall at the lakefront museum broke into applause as a curtain fell and
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