The Vertebrate Palaeontology Collection includes prehistoric remains of extinct and sub-fossil backboned animals from fish to amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.
Encompassing more than 250 000 fossil specimens, the collection spans vertebrate life on Earth from the Devonian through to the Quaternary, a period of some 400 million years. It includes ancestors of all living phyla, plus numerous extinct groups.
The collection incorporates the former vertebrate fossil collections of the University of Melbourne and the Geological Survey of Victoria. The majority of specimens are from Victoria but there is also representative material from other states of Australia and overseas. The collection also contains numerous large casts, utilised mainly for exhibition purposes.
Regularly accessed by students and academics from Australian and overseas institutions, it is a valuable resource for research as well as development of exhibitions and public programs for Museum Victoria. Access to the Vertebrate Palaeontology collection can be arranged by contacting Dr Thomas Rich (Senior Curator) or David Pickering (Assistant Collection Manager).
Significant items
- Fish fossils spanning some 400 million years and representing all major groups. Particular localities well represented include Mt Howitt, Victoria (Devonian); Gogo, Western Australia (Late Devonian); and Koonwarra, Victoria (Early Cretaceous).
- Cenozoic shark and bony fish fossils from Victorian sites including Beaumaris, Batesford, Waurn Ponds and Grange Burn near Hamilton.
- Early Cretaceous dinosaurs and other tetrapods excavated in Victoria over the past 20 years at Dinosaur Cove on the Otway coast and Flat Rocks near Inverloch on the South Gippsland coast, representing dinosaur fauna adapted to polar conditions.
- Several different groups of Cretaceous mammals associated with the dinosaur fauna at Flat Rocks near Inverloch, Victoria, possibly including the earliest know placental mammals.
- Fossil marine mammals (whales, seals and dugongs) spanning the last 30 million years (Oligocene to Holocene) from over 60 localities across Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.
- Skulls and partial skeletons of toothed mysticete whales (e.g. Mammalodon and Janjucetus) from Oligocene rocks near Torquay (Victoria), significant for understanding the origin of baleen whales.
- Pliocene mammal fauna from Grange Burn near Hamilton and Beaumaris, Victoria, significant for international correlation.
- Pleistocene terrestrial vertebrate collections from Buchan, Glenelg and Portland, Victoria.
- Diprotodon and associated fauna from Lancefield and Bacchus Marsh, Victoria.
- Palaeozoic fishes and Mesozoic ichthyosaurs from Europe, collected by Robert Damon and his son R. Damon of Weymouth, purchased from 1861 to 1899.
See The Discovery of Dinosaur Cove, an essay on this collection from A Museum for the People: A history of Museum Victoria and its predecessor institutions 1854-2000.