Meet the celebrities
Most T. rex skeletons have nicknames, usually after the person who found them. Here are some of the best known.
Sue
- Sue was found on 12 August 1990 by fossil hunter Sue Hendrickson, and is named after her. Wikipedia: Sue (dinosaur)
- The find happened because of a flat tyre: while the rest of the team went to get the truck fixed, Hendrickson explored some nearby cliffs. Wikipedia: Sue (dinosaur)
- Sue is over 90% complete by bulk, about 250 bones. Wikipedia: Sue (dinosaur) · checked 24 Oct 2026
- Sue’s skull is 1.394 m long. Wikipedia: Sue (dinosaur)
- After a legal fight over who owned it, Sue was sold at auction in October 1997 for US$8.3 million, at that time the highest price ever paid for a fossil. Wikipedia: Sue (dinosaur)
- Sue is on permanent display at the Field Museum in Chicago. The mounted skeleton opened to the public on 17 May 2000. Wikipedia: Tyrannosaurus
- Sue had a broken and healed lower leg bone and tail bones, scarred face bones, and a tooth from another T. rex stuck in a neck bone. Wikipedia: Tyrannosaurus
Stan
- Stan is named after amateur palaeontologist Stan Sacrison, who spotted its pelvis in a cliff in South Dakota in 1987. It was dug up in 1992. Wikipedia: Stan (dinosaur)
- Stan’s skull is widely regarded as the best T. rex skull ever found. Wikipedia: Stan (dinosaur) · checked 24 Oct 2026
- Stan had broken and healed ribs, a broken and healed neck, and a hole in the back of its head about the size of a T. rex tooth. Wikipedia: Tyrannosaurus
- In October 2020 Stan sold at auction for $31.8 million, then the highest price ever paid for a dinosaur fossil. A Stegosaurus beat that record in July 2024. Wikipedia: Stan (dinosaur)
- Stan is now displayed at the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, which opened on 22 November 2025. Wikipedia: Stan (dinosaur) · checked 24 Oct 2026
Scotty
- Scotty was found in Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1991 by Robert Gebhardt, a local high school principal. Freeing it from the rock took about two decades, mostly by hand. Wikipedia: Scotty (dinosaur)
- Scotty, a T. rex from Saskatchewan in Canada, is reported to be 13 m long. One method of estimating mass puts it at 8.87 tonnes, the largest known specimen. Wikipedia: Tyrannosaurus · checked 24 Oct 2026
Bucky
- In 1998, 20-year-old Bucky Derflinger spotted a T. rex toe bone sticking out of the ground: the youngest person to discover a Tyrannosaurus. Bucky was the first T. rex found with a wishbone. Wikipedia: Tyrannosaurus
The Wankel rex
- The Wankel rex, found in Montana, gave scientists the first complete T. rex arms in 1989. Wikipedia: Tyrannosaurus
B-rex
- A T. rex from Montana nicknamed B-rex had medullary bone inside its thigh bone: a special tissue only female birds make when they are about to lay eggs. So B-rex was a female. Wikipedia: Tyrannosaurus
- In 2007, traces of collagen protein from T. rex bone were found to match those of chickens most closely. Wikipedia: Tyrannosaurus
Jane, and a debate
- Some small tyrannosaur skeletons, such as one nicknamed Jane, have been argued to be young T. rex. Others think they belong to a separate, smaller dinosaur called Nanotyrannus. The debate is still going. Wikipedia: Tyrannosaurus · checked 24 Oct 2026
Head to head
Comparisons of T. rex skulls found the longest head (specimen LACM 23844) was 136.5 cm long and the widest (Sue) 90.2 cm wide. Wikipedia: Tyrannosaurus · checked 24 Oct 2026
About the numbers
Sizes, masses, speeds and bite forces for T. rex are estimates from fossils, and different studies get different answers. Where we give a figure, the source link says which study and the date we checked it.
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