Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Dinosaur 13 Blu-ray Movie Review

Dem bones.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 2, 2015

If you’ve ever landed at O’Hare or even had a change of flight or a layover where you’ve been able to wander the labyrinthine halls of commerce adorning the huge complex, you’ve probably noticed one of Chicago’s icons liberally featured on various tchockes: Sue, the immense T-Rex fossil that is housed in Chicago’s equally iconic Field Museum of Natural History. That O’Hare vicariousness can’t compare to seeing Sue up close and personal at the Field, but if you count those who pass through the airport as well as those who have been privileged to gaze at Sue at the Field, there are no doubt hundreds of millions of people who could identify this mutant dinosaur. Though it was big news (no pun intended) at the time, few probably really remember the drama surrounding the discovery and ultimate sale of Sue to the Field, a saga which started with a ragtag if completely knowledgeable and professional bunch of commercial paleontologists (as opposed to those stuffy academic types) and ended in a devastating set of legal cases that ultimately put one of those paleontologists behind bars for a year and a half, and Sue into a kind of prison of her own for several years as her fate was worked out in various courts.

Sue the dinosaur got her name from Susan Hendrickson, an amateur paleontologist who had once been romantically linked with Peter Larson, but who had continued to work with him on digs even after their relationship went the “let’s be friends” route. Peter and his brother Neal had grown up under a father who loved exploring and cultivating his sons’ interest in secrets buried in the land. As adults Peter and Neal formed the Black Hills Institute, a private corporation that specialized in finding and excavating fossils and then selling them on the open market, both to collectors and museums. It was within the context of a Black Hills Institute expedition in South Dakota that Sue was literally stumbled upon by Sue Hendrickson one unusually foggy day.

Dinosaur 13’s enumeration refers to the fact that prior to the discovery of Sue, only a dozen previous T-Rex fossils had been unearthed, and none of those rose above around a 40% complete rate. Pete realized almost instantly that the remains of Sue might be almost completely intact, buried into a kind of shelf like mountainside on land purportedly owned by a rancher named Maurice Williams. A supposed purchase of the fossil took place, and Black Hills Institute celebrated as having discovered one of the greatest paleontological finds of all time. Soon after Sue was excavated and returned to the Larsons’ home town of Hill City, South Dakota, though, things began to go horribly wrong.

Without “spoiling” (if that’s the right word, considering the circumstances) the rather arcane legal maneuvers that ensued, suffice it to say that at least two parties considered themselves to be the rightful owners of Sue instead of Black Hills Institute, namely Maurice Williams, who cashed a $5,000 check from the Institute clearly labeled as being for the sale, and (incredible as it may sound) the United States Government, which claimed the land Sue was found on was held in trust for Williams as a member of the Sioux Tribe (ironically the Sioux Tribe itself also attempted briefly to assert legal authority over the fossils, something that legally speaking went nowhere in a big hurry).

Clearly Sue was “big” in every sense of the word, but there were also other forces at play, ones which are only alluded to rather discursively in Dinosaur 13. While there’s a brief nod to the then au courant rivalry between so-called “commercial” paleontologists (i.e., guys that dug stuff up mostly to sell it) and academic paleontologists, there’s less emphasis paid on the fact that a lot of the academic types hold graduate degrees that the Larsons don’t. There’s also absolutely no doubt where filmmaker Todd Douglas Miller’s sympathies lie— they’re clearly with the Larsons, Black Hills Institute and various other tangentially related folks.

That perhaps casts a retinue of government types as typical mustache twirling villains, when the situation is perhaps a bit more nuanced than that. There’s a kind of rogue element about the Larsons that Dinosaur 13 only hints at, though it lurks just beneath the surface and seems to inform some of how the FBI and others (including a martinet judge) came to view them and their cohorts.

While perhaps not offering a well rounded, objective view of what happened, there’s little doubt that the film’s perspective adds an air of tension and disbelief as a marauding government simply seems to steal a private business’ bounty, something that’s echoed somewhat humorously by the sight of a very young Bill O’Reilly spouting anti-government sentiment in favor of American entrepreneurialism. (As mentioned before, the story was big news back in the days, as evidenced by source video offering a wealth of news heavyweights, including a young woman billed as Katherine Couric.)

The documentary does a great job of looking into the wounded souls of several people who came into contact with Sue, only to see this improbably large beast slip through their grasp. There’s a grudging sense of relief that at least Sue ended up in as prestigious an environment as the Field, but there’s also a certain ruefulness exhibited that all that moolah generated by those aforementioned tchokes isn’t being funneled into the coffers of the Black Hills Institute.

Dinosaur 13 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Dinosaur 13 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films and CNN Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The presentation here is something of a mixed bag, with the contemporary interview and location work obviously looking much better than some of the fairly shoddy archival video. All of the talking heads segments feature good color, clarity and sharpness, with no issues to report. There are a couple of very brief anomalies in some of the location shots, including a noticeable moment of moiré on what might be a tin roof on one of the buildings in Hill City late in the film. The archival footage varies from home movies from the Larson archives, some of which exhibits pretty bad tracking issues on the lowest part of the frame as well as other inherent problems with indistinct clarity and even focus. The news footage is nominally better, but again can show inherent issues like ghosting.

Dinosaur 13 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Dinosaur 13's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is probably a bit of overkill, since the bulk of the film is simply talking heads and voiceover. Virtually all of the surround activity is generated by the sometimes portentous score by Matt Morton. Fidelity is absolutely fine, and there are no issues of any kind to report on this problem free track.

Dinosaur 13 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 3:46)


• The Continuing Story of Sue (1080p; 17:45) offers some interesting information that might be termed (in the immortal words of Paul Harvey) "the rest of the story."


• Fossil Whales of Peru (1080p; 5:44) is a vintage (short) documentary, both window- and pillarboxed.


• Complete Auction of Sue (1080p; 10:19) is some pretty shaky video footage of the auction, window- and pillarboxed as with the above piece.


• How to Build a Dinosaur (1080p; 1:49) is a fun little piece showing how technicians assemble a huge beast like Sue.

Dinosaur 13 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Some watching Dinosaur 13 will probably feel, as I did, that they're not quite getting the whole story, but what's presented here is certainly a trip through a Kafkaesque experience by some apparently well intentioned folks, even if there's an intentional ploy to downplay their monetary interests in what happens to Sue. One way or the other this is one of the more fascinating combinations of an entrepreneurial spirit with an odd niche in science and exploration that has been explored in a documentary, and despite its obviously lopsided approach toward the material, the story is so odd and even moving that it's easy to forgive the film its more screed like elements. Anyone who has seen Sue or has a Sue trinket around the house will probably want to watch this primer in how she got to where she is today. Recommended.