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Morning News

Flynn: Sue Indicates Dinosaurs More Bird than Reptile

Aired May 17, 2000 - 10:20 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: She's the biggest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found and at 65 million years old, "Sue," as the skeleton is called, looks pretty darn good for its age.

CNN Chicago bureau chief Jeff Flock joins us live from Chicago's Field Museum where Sue, the T. rex, is on display. He's been there all morning.

Hi, Jeff.

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Kyra.

We have been giving you electronic looks all morning at Sue. But now some real folks that -- the doors are opening, perhaps you can see outside the museum. The extraordinary Field Museum which has, I think, 21 million specimens but none with more eyes today than Sue the dinosaur. Yes, it cost them $8.36 million, I think, was the figure. But today I think they think it's worth it.

I want to show you before we come back to Sue and -- live, I want to show you what it looked like when they dropped the curtain. That's the live picture a little bit ago, a few hours ago. They dropped the curtain on what has been 10 years in the making since it was dug from the Badlands of South Dakota.

And I'm joined by John Flynn. No one prouder than John Flynn, the chairman of the Geology Department.

How extraordinary is this find?

JOHN FLYNN, CHAIR OF GEOLOGY DEPT., FIELD MUSEUM: This is an amazing animal even though T. rex has been known for over a hundred years. This is the largest, the most complete and the best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex that's ever been found. And that allows you to learn things that weren't possible before with other specimens.

FLOCK: Give me the three headlines on what you've learned from this specimen thus far. And this is, as you've said, the most extensive, 90 percent of the bones that we're looking at here are real Sue.

FLYNN: That's right, I think one of the most amazing things is that there's very powerful support for the scientific hypothesis that birds are living dinosaurs. We see it in the ability to reconstruct with the muscles or the legs and the hips look like, and it's much more bird-like than reptilian-like.

And then, similarly in the skull, we were able to take CAT scans, 750 X-ray slices through the skull. And that showed that there were nerve patterns in T. rex that we didn't know before, that are much more bird-like than reptile-like; showing compelling support for birds and dinosaurs being closely related.

In addition, in that brain scan that we had, we saw for the first time huge nasal or olfactory bulbs, telling us that T. rex had a tremendously well-developed sense of smell. So in addition to having three dimensional depth perception with its eyes, it also had acute sense of smell and it could sort of sniff its way through life.

FLOCK: So in that "Jurassic Park" sequence that many of us are familiar with where, was it the Sam Neill character who said: don't move and they won't get you. They would have gotten him anyway.

FLYNN: Yes, I'm sorry Sam, that was bad advice. So I -- well, we actually had Steven Spielberg here one time and we were showing him the skull. And he said: Well, it was raining out. Yes, but it still could smell them.

FLOCK: Extraordinary, John Flynn, thank you so much. Congratulations on your achievement.

FLYNN: Thank you.

FLOCK: And we will see what new finds you find.

FLYNN: It's tremendous, thank you very much, Jeff.

FLOCK: All right, John Flynn, chairman of the Geology Department here at the Field Museum.

Perhaps you hear the sounds of dinosaurs off in the background. Picture this one back here behind me, it's seven tons with all of the skin on there. It was an extraordinary thing, and it's an extraordinary thing today in Chicago. We'll continue to watch it.

I'm Jeff Flock, CNN, reporting live from the Field Museum in Chicago.

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