Went to see the (replica) skeleton of Sue the tyrannosaur at the Pacific Science Center yesterday.
I was pretty impressed. I had seen T. rex skeletons before, at the Black Hills Institute, where they have a couple (three, maybe?) skeletons, including “Stan”. But at the Center, it was just Sue, set up in a fairly active pose, silhouetted against a white wall, and it was much more dramatic.
One thing that surprised me was how beat-up she was. She had a number of broken ribs that had healed, some kind of pathological holes in her lower jaw (abscesses?), and a really messy-looking lump on her tibia that looked to my inexperienced eye like another healed break.
She must have had a pretty active life, I guess, and those ribs looked like a Triceratops must have gotten in a few good licks. I wonder how she managed with a broken tibia? Did she have a mate to feed her while she healed? Or did she just suck it up and carry on as best she could?