Dino-Sue

Dino-Sue is a bronze Tyrannosaurus rex skeletal cast billed as an attraction at Disney's Animal Kingdom, located in DinoLand U.S.A. along the path to the Dinosaur attraction.

History
Dino-Sue is a reproduction of Sue, the most complete Tyrannosaurus skeleton discovered. Sue was discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1990 by Sue Hendrickson and the Black Hills Institute. However, a great legal battle over ownership of the bones ensued between the Black Hills Institute, Maurice Williams; the rancher who owned the land Sue was found on, the Sioux tribe that Williams belonged to, and the US Department of the Interior; which had leased the land to Williams. In 1995, the court case was settled in favor of Williams, who put the bones up for auction with Sotheby's in 1997.

The auction took place on October 4, 1997 and was won by the Field Museum in Chicago with assistance from McDonald's and Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, with the final price coming to $8.3 million dollars. As part of the partnership, some of the preparation for Sue's remains would take place at a specially built Fossil Preparation Lab at DinoLand U.S.A. that opened with the park on April 22, 1998 before closing upon completion of the prep work in the spring of 2000. With Sue's completion, Disney would receive their own cast for display in the park. Though the original Sue skeleton mount in Chicago was re-posed and given their previously un-mounted gastralia in 2018, Disney has left their Sue display as it was when it first debuted at the park.