The Vertebrate Palaeontology Collection includes prehistoric remains of extinct and sub-fossil backboned fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.
Encompassing more than 250 000 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 also contains numerous large casts, mainly for exhibition purposes.
The collection incorporates the former vertebrate fossil collections of the University of Melbourne and the Geological Survey of Victoria. Most specimens are from Victoria but there is also representative material from other states of Australia and overseas.
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.
Significant items
- Pleistocene terrestrial vertebrate collections from Buchan, Glenelg and Portland, Victoria.
- Palaeozoic fishes and Mesozoic ichthyosaurs from Europe, collected by Robert Damon and his son R. Damon of Weymouth, purchased from 1861 to 1899.
A fossil of the Gogo fish, Gogonasus andrewsae.
Image: John Broomfield
Source: Museum Victoria
Australian fish fossils
MV's colleciton of fish fossils spans some 400 million years and represents all major groups. Particular localities well represented include Mt Howitt, Victoria (Devonian); Gogo, Western Australia (Late Devonian); and Koonwarra, Victoria (Early Cretaceous).
The collection also includes cenozoic shark and bony fish fossils from Victorian sites including Beaumaris, Batesford, Waurn Ponds and Grange Burn near Hamilton.
Skull of the extinct early whale Janjucetus hunderi.
Image: Rodney Start
Source: Museum Victoria
Fossils of marine mammals
MV holds a significant collection of 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.
Of particular research focus are the 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.
Original skull of extinct marsupial Diprotodon, a variety of Australian megafauna from the Cainozoic era.
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria
Megafauna subfossils
MV's collection of pliocene mammal fauna from Grange Burn near Hamilton and Beaumaris, Victoria, is significant for international correlation. It includes specimens of Diprotodon and associated fauna from Lancefield and Bacchus Marsh, Victoria.
Quaternary megafauna on the 600 Million Years: Victoria evolves website
Tyrannosauroid pubis specimen. This fossil was uncovered at Dinosaur Cove in 1989. It is about 115 million years old and represents the first evidence of tyrannosauroids in the southern hemisphere.
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria
Dinosaur Cove fossils
Since 1979, systematic excavation at Dinosaur Cove on the Otway coast, and Flat Rocks near Inverloch on the South Gippsland coast, has uncovered Early Cretaceous dinosaurs representing fauna adapted to polar conditions. Between the two localities, a picture is emerging of life over a span of 10 million years in a previously unknown polar world that was inhabited by a variety of dinosaurs along with fish, archaic amphibians, mammals and birds.
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.