Sue Hendrickson, born in Chicago in 1949, never earned a paleontology degree -- she built a career as a self-taught field explorer, working amber deposits in the Dominican Republic, diving on a sunken 17th-century Spanish galleon off the Philippines, and collecting fossils across the American West.[2]
On August 12, 1990, while working with the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research near Faith, South Dakota, Hendrickson set out alone to explore a rock outcropping while the rest of the team fixed a flat tire. Hiking the base of a 60-foot bluff, she spotted three large bones weathering out of the rock face. The specimen she'd found -- named 'Sue' in her honor -- turned out to be the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever recovered, roughly 90% complete by bone count. After a legal battle over ownership, Sue was auctioned at Sotheby's in 1997 for $8.4 million and has been the centerpiece of Chicago's Field Museum ever since.[1][2]
Hendrickson has continued field work in the decades since, and remains one of the best-known examples of a major paleontological discovery made outside formal academia.[2]