Rex Appeal 2

The true, personal, behind-the-scenes account of paleontology's most dramatic adventure!

This is it: The only first-hand account of the most storied chapter in paleontological history—expanded in this second edition with 100 additional pages. Released more than twenty years after the first edition, this volume brings both a riveting personal story and the cutting edge of T. rex science. Peter Larson, team leader of the field crew that’s dug more T. rex than anyone else, reveals what he’s contributed to hunting, restoring, and researching dinosaurs—over his now seven decades of experience.

Both OG paleo fans and new generation of enthusiasts have a chance to explore the updated personal drama that occurred when the most famous rex ever, Sue, was seized by the FBI, changing Larson’s international headlines from science to politics. The first edition of this story inspired Todd Douglas Miller’s 2014 Emmy Award^®-winning documentary, Dinosaur 13—which featured both authors on screen.

However, this second edition also fills in “what happened next”—with revealing tales behind the next crop of headlines in Larson’s life. Learn about the second-best rex, Stan, and yet another jaw-dropping lawsuit—as well as Larson’s work to help government agencies and courts to create fair and proper permitting processes for field paleontologists.

This is what really happened to this champion of the past—a man who never lost his faith, and the goals he continues to work toward—all for the love of science. This is a book about passion and persistence; if you love dinosaurs, this book is a true inspiration.

Peter Larson has celebrated more than fifty years in business, after starting a fledgling rock business during undergraduate school. Since then, he’s created the largest private fossil company in the world, Black Hills Institute of Geologic Research. The company has placed dozens of real and cast skeletons, as well as countless other fossil specimens, in major museums and smaller collections on many continents.

Through his company, Larson also has paved the way for independent paleontologists the world over—and made headlines when the team excavated the world’s two most complete, significant T. rex skeletons, in 1990 and 1992. He knew they were the finds of a lifetime, but Larson had no way of foreseeing that “Sue” and “Stan” would plunge him down an unexpected rabbit hole—into a topsy-turvy, Alice in Wonderland world that caused him to risk everything.

Kristin Donnan, then a reporter for NBC's Unsolved Mysteries, returned home to South Dakota to cover Larson's struggle for Sue. She soon cut her paleo teeth at the excavation site of Stan, the rex that twenty years later would forever change paleontology; years later, she supported the production of Dinosaur 13.

Along with researching paleontology, Kristin owns an independent publishing company; writes her own feature and television screenplays; writes documentary scripts for MacGillivray Freeman Films, the world’s largest producer of giant-screen documentary films; and provides consulting services for other authors.