The dinosaur formerly known as Sue will now formally be known as Sue.
The Field Museum did an about-face Wednesday and took back the name it had abandoned in January for the spectacular $8.4 million Tyrannosaurus rex fossil it purchased last October.
The news may come as a disappointment to the thousands of kids who entered a contest to give the dinosaur a new name after legal disputes over licensing of the name Sue erupted. But museum officials concede that lawyers advised that the contest-winning name–“Dakota”–had the potential to cause legal problems as well, given that it was already used for several products.
So on Wednesday, museum officials announced that they would go back to calling the fossil Sue but still give awards to the contest winners. The licensing dispute, it turns out, had been resolved after the contest was already under way, officials said.
“After giving the situation much thought,” said John McCarter, the Field Museum’s president, “we decided it was best to return the name `Sue’ to the T. rex, while recognizing the winners in our contest.”
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The celebrated dinosaur, the biggest, most complete T. rex skeleton ever found, originally was named Sue after paleontologist Susan Hendrickson, who first spotted its bones near Faith, S.D., in 1990 while working for the Black Hills Institute.
Two years later, federal agents seized Sue’s bones from the institute, a commercial fossil hunting firm, claiming they had been taken illegally from federal land held in trust for a rancher who lived there.
The government sold the fossil at auction in New York last year. The Field Museum won the bidding, with McDonald’s and Walt Disney corporations helping bankroll the $8.4 million purchase price.
The money went to the rancher. The Black Hills Institute, left with nothing, claimed trademark and licensing rights to the Sue name.
When the institute and the Field Museum could not come to an agreement on the use of the name, the museum dropped the Sue name in January, announcing a contest for elementary-school children to find a new name.
A few weeks later, the institute agreed to drop all claims on the name Sue.
Believing it was too late to stop the contest, the museum went ahead and chose a winning entry, “Dakota,” from thousands sent in. It was a name entered by 20 children, and three of them were deemed grand prize winners on the basis of their essays.
The decision to stick with Sue delighted Black Hills Institute officials.
“Hurray, that’s wonderful news,” said Marion Zenker, the institute’s marketing director. “We had told the museum it could use the name free of charge, and that we hoped the Field (Museum) would understand why that had been such a difficult decision for us to come to. We finally decided the name (Sue) belonged and should go with the dinosaur, and felt there should be no acrimony or dissension about it.”
The contest winners still will each be awarded the grand prizes of computer systems and software. They were identified as Devon Bateman, 7, Bolingbrook; Lauren K. Liotta, 9, Winthrop Harbor; and David Frisch, 11, Oak Park. The 100 runner-up entries will get dinosaur T-shirts.
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MORE ON THE INTERNET: Visit a virtual class to learn more about the Tyrannosaurus rex at chicago.tribune.com/go/trex