Sue's birthday party is Sunday in Faith, but how many candles to put on her cake is open to debate in her hometown.

The science of paleontology and the radiometric dating techniques it uses would put the age of the world's most famous T. rex at about 66 million years. A cast replica of Sue's real fossilized bones, which are in Chicago's Field Museum, is on display in Faith through Sept. 1 as part of the traveling exhibition, "A T. rex Named Sue."

The Black Hills Creation Science Association, which hoped to piggyback onto the Sue exhibit to explain its belief in creation science, says Sue's fossil is much younger. Belief in a young Earth theory puts about 4,300 candles on Sue's birthday cake. Creation science adherents subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Bible's Book of Genesis; its advocates says dinosaurs lived as recently as 4,300 years ago.

"We put Sue at about 4,000 years ago," Russ McGlenn, a San Diego creation science teacher, said. McGlenn leads a three-week dinosaur dig/creation science camp for families each summer in the Lemmon area. "Our hypothesis is that she died in Noah's flood and was buried there, along with thousands of other animals."

The Field Museum wasn't interested in making the creation science perspective part of its Sue exhibition, according to Whitney Owens, traveling exhibitions director for the Chicago museum. When museum officials learned that creation science adherents in Faith, including Wayne Sletten, a retired veterinarian and longtime Faith resident, planned a series of lectures titled "Sue & Creationism Explained" in the same community center, they objected.

Owens invoked a clause in the exhibition's contract with the Faith Chamber of Commerce that says any additional local content added to the exhibition must be approved by the Field Museum.

"We're just exercising our rights under the contract," Owens said. "Sue's a scientific exhibition, so we felt that non-scientific elements would be best displayed elsewhere. We wanted to keep the attention on the science of Sue and on her return to Faith, not on the supernatural."

Lectures on creation theory would have distracted from Sue's homecoming, Owens said. "Sue's a great story by itself. We don't want anything to distract from the wonderful story that Sue gets to come home to Faith."

The Sue exhibit has traveled all across America since 2000, but Faith is the first location where creation science beliefs became an issue for it, Owens said.

"Actually, it is the first time. We thought we might run into this before, but this is the first time," she said.

It was the job of Faith City Attorney Eric Bogue to inform David LaFrance, a Rapid City engineer and president of the Black Hills Creation Science Association, that its lecture series wouldn't be welcome in the exhibition hall beside Sue. "They wanted the exhibit to be about the exhibit and not something else," Bogue said. "The contract says they have the right to pull the exhibit if they feel it isn't being appropriately handled."

Although the chamber of commerce was "very pleased to have the creation science viewpoint in Faith, we have to respect the ownership of the exhibit itself," Bogue said.

A series of four talks by McGlenn and Brian Young of the Creation Instruction Association were moved to the Frontier Room, a private building directly across the street from the Sue exhibit. McGlenn spoke to about 50 people each week, then led a tour of the Sue exhibit from a creation science perspective.

LaFrance and McGlenn say young Earth believers are often the victims of the kind of scientific "discrimination" that the Field Museum showed.

"There were some of us who were kind of upset by that, but we're used to viewpoint discrimination, that entrenched point of view in traditional science that isn't willing to allow evidence of a young Earth," LaFrance said. "I see it a lot."

Speaking by telephone from his home in San Diego, McGlenn said there is plenty of scientific evidence to support his lecture series arguing that T. rex and other dinosaurs lived much more recently than millions of years ago. "Our goal was to say, one view of Sue is that she's 65 million years old. But here's another view of Sue, with scientific evidence to support it."

Traditional academic circles limit the definition of scientist to "someone who believes in the evolutionary theory," said McGlenn, who describes himself as an amateur paleontologist who has led dinosaur digs on the Stuart Schmidt ranch near Keldron for seven years. "Unless you spout the party line, you aren't allowed in the building," he said. "But we are scientists in our own right."

Although McGlenn agrees that the Bible is not a science book, he says it is "an accurate history book" that contains the essential hypothesis of creation science: A worldwide flood that lasted exactly 371 days left behind vast deposits of mud and sediment that allowed the bones of animals killed in that flood, including Sue, to be preserved as fossils.

He dismisses radiometric dating techniques, which have been in common use by geologists, archaeologists and paleontologists for more than half a century, as inaccurate and unreliable.

"It results in far too wide a range of ages to be accurate," McGlenn said.

City attorney Bogue isn't saying how old he thinks Sue is. He's just thrilled to have her in town for the summer. "I'm not an expert. I'm just happy to have it here."

Sue's birthday party on Sunday will include talks by Peter Larson, paleontology expert and president of the Black Hills Geological Institute in Hill City. Larson and a crew from his institute unearthed Sue near Faith 18 years ago this month. Larson will speak at 12:30 p.m. about the discovery and excavation of Sue and again at 2 p.m. about gender identification of T. rex fossils.

Also, part of the birthday celebration is a 3:30 p.m. talk by local rancher Bucky Derflinger, who discovered the juvenile T. rex fossil "Bucky." That fossil, which belongs to Larson's Hill City institute, is on display as part of the Sue exhibit, with approval by the Field Museum.

"That's all entirely appropriate and in keeping with the exhibition. Black Hills Geological Research is another scientific institute. We welcome them," Owens said about the Hill City group.

If you go

What: Birthday party for Sue the T. rex

When: 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 10

Where: Faith Community Center

More: Cake will be served at 4:30 p.m.

Contact Mary Garrigan at 394-8424 or mary.garrigan@rapidcityjournal.com