Word: sues
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Larson then wrote Williams a check for $5,000 and shipped the bones to institute headquarters in Hill City, S.D., where he planned to catalog, prepare, mount and display the magnificent skeleton. Larson started giving public lectures and publishing popular articles on Sue. Tourists began streaming...
Then, in May 1992, a different kind of visitor arrived: FBI agents and National Guard troops, among others, raided the Black Hills Institute, seizing Sue and other fossils, along with photos, business records and documents. In 1993 a federal grand jury indicted Larson and five colleagues on a total of 39 felony charges, including stealing fossils from government land...
...turns out that while rancher Williams did own the land, the acreage on which Sue was found had been placed in trust to the U.S. government. Thus he had no right to sell the fossil in the first place--at least not without Department of the Interior approval. And indeed, when the Black Hills Institute sued the government for Sue's return, a federal district court ruled that the original sale was invalid...
Wherever the truth lies, Sue ended up back in Williams' hands, and the government not only gave him permission to sell but urged him to go the auction route. Why? "It was hard to set a fixed price and hard to know a fair price," says Sotheby's executive vice president David Redden, who is in charge of the sale...
...million-plus that Sue is expected to draw will undoubtedly seem fair to Williams, although scientists like the Academy of Natural Sciences' Wolberg fear it will send the costs of acquiring important fossils out of sight. In fact, another T. rex, known as Mr. Z Rex, is on the market for a staggering $12 million. The owners, says Jim Wyatt, a fossil dealer who is acting as broker, "based that price on the excitement generated by T. rexes and dinosaurs in general over the past few years...