What Killed Sue?

Photo by brantastic

A new study shows that Sue, the Field Museum's mighty T-Rex, may have been felled by something not so mighty, more War of the Worlds than Jurrasic Park: a parasite. The Tribune fills us in on the details, deduced from holes in Sue's jaws.

The holes in Sue's mandible bones at one time were thought to be bite marks by another T. rex during a fight sometime during her life. A paper published Tuesday in the online science journal PLoS says instead that the holes were made a parastic infection called trichomonosis, which continues to cause fatal disease in modern-day carnivorous birds known as raptors -- hawks, eagles and osprey.

"The general idea is that if a tyrannosaur had this infection, and you see holes in the mandibles, it would mean the animal had a really serious infection in the back of the throat, making it very difficult to feed and breathe," said Ewan Wolff, a paleontologist at the University of Wisconsin who is the lead author of the article.

According to Wolff, trichomonosis is spread among birds of prey by eating the infected flesh of another animal and was most likely spread to tyrannosaurs like Sue in a similar way.