[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] female. Somehow, she had been killed with her family. He em- barked on a project to see what the differences between the sexes were in other dinosaur species of which far more examples had been found, and whose sex has been determined. In many cases the females were the larger, so the very size of  Sue could in fact indicate that she was a female. Among humans, the male is generally larger, but there are many exceptions to that rule among other species. In addition, Larson hoped that  Sue would shed some light on the long, bitter debate about whether dinosaurs were warm- blooded or cold-blooded animals. There were also questions about brain size to be dealt with. NASA was persuaded to carry out a CAT scan of the skull, and preparations were made to ship it to Huntsville, Alabama, on May 17, 1992. But on April 29, the Rapid City Journal carried a headline revealing that the Sioux tribe Maurice Williams was associated with had filed suit to regain  Sue. On May 14, the FBI, backed up by the National Guard, raided the Black Hills Institute and prepared to haul  Sue away. The resulting mess is too complex to report on in any detail here. Steve Fiffer spends more than half his book, Tyrannosaurus Sue, dealing with the ins and outs of this much-publicized case, which turned into what many saw as a trumped-up vendetta against Larson himself. Several prominent figures in the academic and museum worlds who knew Larson took his side, citing the great care taken in the fossil lab at the Black Hills Institute, and the meticulous notes that were kept there. They called him a sci- entist. Others lumped him in with fossil hunters whom they regarded as little better than thieves, people who did a sloppy job of excavating and then sold their fossils to collectors, often foreign, thus preventing proper study by professionals. Robert Bakker, one of the country s foremost paleontologists (a leader among those who believe that dinosaurs were warm-blooded, like birds, rather than cold-blooded, like lizards), told Steve Fiffer Susan Hendrickson 195 that he had originally been suspicious of Larson but had changed his mind once he saw the lab at the institute.  We stiff Ph.D.s, he said,  speaking in Latin, wearing elbow pads, criticize the Larsons for not having degrees, but their research is better than ours. There has always been a degree of tension between the academics and the field workers in paleontology. In the mid- nineteenth century, when interest in extinct animals first took hold, the vast majority of those who dug up the bones were amateurs. It was professionals like Richard Owen who became famous, however, because they did the subsequent scientific work that led to the classification and naming of extinct species. The great rivalry in America between Edward Drinker Cope and O. C. Marsh was further fueled by the fact that Cope did a lot of field work, while Marsh did very little. Both, in fact, hired many amateurs to search for fossils. Barnum Brown had considerable education, although not an advanced degree. It was field work that he loved, and he had a nose for fossils, a sixth sense like Sue Hendrickson s, that made him the most successful fossil hunter of his time. Being a dinosaur hunter is akin to being a comet hunter, like David Levy (chapter 2). Levy is simply better at spotting comets than most professional astronomers, and the professionals have their hands full with work that absolutely requires an advanced degree. In terms of dinosaur hunting, the logistics and expense of mounting a major expedition, like the one Michael Novacek led for the American Museum of Natural History to the Gobi Desert, inhibit the number of such efforts. They take money away from other museum priorities. The so-called amateurs like Peter Larson operate on a shoestring. He lived in a trailer next to the institute, and it was little wonder that there were prob- lems with the collecting truck on the day Hendrickson discov- ered  Sue : the vehicle was fifteen years old. Larson certainly wasn t getting rich from his work. 196 It Doesn t Take a Rocket Scientist Most professional paleontologists wouldn t regard someone like Sue Hendrickson as a scientist at all, and she doesn t see her- self as one, either not exactly. She does know that she has a knack for finding things, important things that advance scientific knowledge in many cases, an instinct that is rare across the board, whether you are talking about amateurs or professionals. She doesn t think a degree would make her better at it. Indeed, she can give the impression that she suspects it might be inhibit- ing. She doesn t have to come up with results to justify the expenses of a museum-sponsored expedition. What s more, such expeditions go by the book you don t go wandering off with your dog in the Badlands just because you have a hunch. As to the matter of knowledge, Hendrickson is capable of absorbing enormous amounts of new information very quickly. She was sure she had found a T. rex embedded in the sandstone cliff on Maurice Williams s ranch because she knew that the vertebrae of a T. rex were articulated in a particular way. That kind of knowledge can be acquired by anyone with a fine mind it doesn t have to happen in a classroom.  Academics are snobs, she has said. Yet there are many academics like Robert Bakker who salute her. They know she has something extra, and that she doesn t care about credit, just the thrill of the find and the opportunity to add a little something to the accumulated knowl- edge of humankind about the vast mysteries of the natural world. Sue Hendrickson has been asked,  How do you do it? all her adult life, about rare fish, amber, and certainly about  Sue. She knows what the press wants to hear, and she isn t comfort- able with the idea of a sixth sense per se. Nor does she see her- self as blessed with some curious form of luck.  I don t believe in fate, she has said. Between the lines, one senses that the answer she would like to give is,  I can find things because I m Sue Hendrickson, but that would sound self-important, and she is not that kind of person. Susan Hendrickson 197 It is widely agreed that if Hendrickson had not found  Sue that day, the specimen might never have been found, or at least not for decades, by which time it would have been weathered to the point that it would be much less complete. The cliff was located in badlands, not grazing area. Even Maurice Williams hadn t been near the cliff in years. What s more, unless someone knew how to look, the fossil could have gone unnoticed. Nestled among undulating weathered rock, it was not easy to see. You had to know to look for the dribbled-down bones at the base of the cliff. In addition, other fossil hunters might have ignored the area for a long time.  The Larsons have already been there, they d say. Nevertheless, there were those in the academic world who had it in for amateur fossil hunters of all kinds, and they egged on the prosecution in the case that was built against Peter Lar- son and his associates. The residents of Hill City, where the Black Hills Institute was located, including its mayor, backed Larson to the hilt. There were charges that the prosecuting attorney was using the case to further his own political ambi- tions a common enough suspicion in many cases of many kinds. Peter Larson, Neal Larson, Terry Wentz, and three other associates were indicted on the day before Thanksgiving, 1993. There were 148 alleged felonies and 6 misdemeanors, ranging from conspiracy to money laundering and interstate transporta- tion of stolen goods. In a chapter titled  You Can Indict a Ham Sandwich, Fiffer notes,  If convicted of all crimes, Peter Larson faced up to 353 years in prison and $13.35 million in fines. The trial lasted seven weeks during early 1995, and the jury debated for two weeks. In the end, Peter Larson was convicted [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl blacksoulman.xlx.pl