Dinosaur 13

 

            Dinosaur 13 is a documentary on finding the T-rex Sue. Sue is a T-rex that was found and is the most complete T-rex fossil found. One scene that really stood out to me was when the protests broke out, it made me feel happy in a way. Now I was sad in regards to the fossil being taken away from the people who were working on it, and the community. But the protests showed the community get together, the kids, the families, all brought together because of a dinosaur. It put a smile on my face to see all the kids with posters and chanting for something they believe in. It really showed the heart and morals of the town of Hill City. But it also made me mad in a way because all these people were being brought together, but they were not able to stop the government. This made me feel mad and hopeless for the community, because they can't stop the government from taking their fossils. 

One thing that really surprised me was the fact that the government and the FBI took almost all the fossils from them. The fact that they went there, brought the national guard, and then took their life's work away was crazy to me. They took letters, fossils and went through desks of the building, it seemed ridiculous. The major thing that surprised me though was the criminal cases brought upon them. I don't understand how it is possible to have that many felonies brought upon them while working with fossils. They were charged with Fossil theft, Transportation of stolen property, selling to other museums making it wire fraud, and then keeping the money from museums as money laundering. These make zero sense on why this happened to me, so it really caught me off guard when they said that in the documentary. I didn't think this was a criminal offense, so that's probably why it caught me so off guard. 

The question that kept popping up after is why did the government get so involved. It's a huge thing for mankind to find a T-rex of this size and to be able to preserve it. Why take it away so it can’t be researched or looked at? Why charge these innocent unknowing paleontologists with crimes that are not necessary? I don't get why the government did what they did, and it makes me angry. I didn’t think I would care as much as I did but it irritated me, it was very unnecessary and it didn't need to happen. Finally, If we put research in the summaries it takes away from the documentary. The summary is on the documentary not on outside information, so doing so takes away from the documentary we give the summary on. The Documentary was overall really interesting and kept me on the edge of my seat throughout.