Pumpkin Stencils: SUE, Fighting African Elephants, and a Tsavo Lion

For Halloween, give your pumpkins some natural history flair with these stencils inspired by famous Field Museum specimens. To create your pumpkin design, download and print a stencil, then cut out the yellow areas. Show us your handiwork on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook! 

SUE the Tyrannosaurus rex

SUE is the largest, most complete T. rex by bone volume, at 90% complete. She’s 40.5 feet long and 13 feet tall at the hip. What you see on view in Stanley Field Hall is the real SUE—minus her skull, which is a corrected cast. The original skull is on the second floor of the Museum. See how well you know this fearsome predator with some fast SUE facts. 

The Fighting African Elephants

The African elephant is the largest land mammal, and its trunk has more muscles than the entire human body. Carl Akeley, considered the father of modern taxidermy, and his wife Delia, collected these elephants in Kenya in 1905. The Fighting African Elephants have been on view at The Field Museum since 1909. Today, you can see them in Stanley Field Hall. 

Learn more about Carl Akeley and how the Fighting Elephants came to be at The Field Museum, on The Brain Scoop. 

Tsavo Lion

The two Tsavo lions, also known as the Tsavo man-eaters, consumed 35 railway workers in Kenya in 1898. (Though it was once claimed that they ate 135 people!) There are several theories as to why the lions developed an appetite for humans, including shortage of other prey and the opportunity of people sleeping outside in unguarded tents. 

Here's how we learned that the Tsavo lions ate fewer people than initially believed.