Field Museum


November 3, 2011 — The 120-year-old Field Museum in Chicago has nothing cooler than the three stuffed and mounted serial killer lions that I’ve already posted about. But the coolness of those lions is stratospheric, meaning there’s an entire planet’s worth of cool that can fit under it. And the Field Museum has that, too.

For instance, like most natural history museums do and like most homes should, it has an entire room full of dinosaur skeletons. However, what the Field Museum has over other natural history museums in this arena is merely the largest and most complete T-Rex skeleton in the entire solar system. Heck, they apparently have so many of its bones that they’re not sure where they all go.

The skeleton is 80% intact, 42-feet-long, and includes the massive skull, which they had to move to its own glass case since the 67 million-year-old skeleton couldn’t support it without a neck brace. And even T-Rex’s look silly in neck braces. The skeleton has a lighter cast of the skull attached to its neck.

Oh, and they named her Sue. The Johnny Cash joke has been made million times as a result. Google it.

Located at 1400 South Lake Shore Dricw, right across from Soldier Field.

The museum’s collection of taxidermy is impressive even without the serial killer lions. In fact, many of their exhibits have multiple examples of the same species “interacting.” I mean, why have only one stuffed giraffe when you can have a four? Answers in the Comments section, please.

One of their more unique of the taxidermy specimens is Bushman the gorilla, who was somewhat of a local celebrity when he arrived in 1930 to reside in Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. Bushman lived until 1951, and its mounted corpse gets a place of honor separate from the other animal displays, right outside the Egypt exhibit.

Which means that they have an Egypt exhibit, too, complete with the only aspects of Egyptian culture that we seem to really care about… mummies. It has about two dozen of them, so it might be a bad place to be caught during the End Times.

The museum has a bunch of other stuff related to botany and geology and other cultures, but those are the highlights, I think. I mean, dinosaurs, taxidermy, mummies. I'll sleep with you after that date.


Puts the "Sue" in Musuem.









The fossil prep lab, where staff learn what it feels like
when the exhibit is on the other foot.
Bushman himself.