Of all the dinosaurs to have ever lived, none has been as embattled as “Sue” the Tyrannosaurus rex. One of the largest apex predators to have ever stalked the Earth, Sue undoubtedly scuffled with and fed upon other dinosaurs in the waning days of the Cretaceous. But even such gory Mesozoic fights look tame compared to the legal clash that Sue’s discovery would kick off some 66 million years after the tyrant’s death. The dinosaur’s modern day trials are at the heart of the new film Dinosaur 13.

How Sue went from a private ranch to the Field Museum is a tangled, painful tale. During a 1990 expedition with commercial fossil outfit the Black