Victoria's dinosaurs

Ankle bone (astragalus) of Allosaurus found near Cape Paterson in 1979. Photographer: Frank Coffa. Source: Museum Victoria.

The first dinosaur bone found in Australia was discovered in Victoria in 1903. A geologist, W.H. Ferguson found a single dinosaur toe bone near Cape Paterson. This carnivorous dinosaur specimen is referred to as the Cape Paterson Claw.

No further bones were located until 1978 when two university students, John Long and Tim Flannery, began collecting fragments from the same site. This led to the prospecting of all Victorian rocks of a similar age-the Cretaceous period-from Inverloch to west of Cape Otway.

Southern Victoria, showing localities where Early Cretaceous vertebrates have been found. Artist: Draga Gelt Source: Patricia Vickers-Rich.

All dinosaur fossils found so far in Victoria have been located on coastal outcrops. There are two reasons for this: firstly, cliffs give access to a broad band of rock strata, and secondly, rapid erosion by the waves means that any fossils found have not been exposed long enough for natural leaching processes to cause deterioration.

Over the past twenty years, many small single bones and teeth and two partial skeletons have been found, mainly in rocks which were once deposits at the bottom of streams and lakes. However, the total amount of material collected from the four square kilometres of accessible rock available can be housed in less than half a dozen museum cabinets.

The Work of Museum Victoria

Much of the work in Victoria over the last 30 years has been directed by the Museum's Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology, Dr Tom Rich together with Professor Pat Vickers-Rich of Monash University. It is their expertise which has enabled teams of volunteers to identify and extract the scattered bones-many from areas which contain thousands of coalified plant remains which look remarkably like bones!

Dinosaur Cove near Cape Otway was the main centre of operations for over 10 years. The site had many difficulties associated with it, not the least being that the rock containing the fossil remains had to be excavated from a series of tunnels blasted into the base of a cliff. The process was laborious and expensive but produced some exciting results from the 110 million-year-old rock. Bones from small, plant-eating dinosaurs-hypsilophodontids-that walked on their hind legs were a major component. These included Fulgurotherium, Atlascopcosaurus and Leaellynasaura. The brain cavity of a beautifully preserved skull of Leaellynasaura seems to suggest that these dinosaurs had exceptional eye-sight. As Australia was then much closer to the South Pole when these dinosaurs lived, perhaps good night vision was necessary during the long Antarctic winter.

In 1994, another excavation was commenced at a site known as Flat Rocks, near Inverloch in South Gippsland. Material similar to that found at Dinosaur Cove has been recovered, including a number of hypsilophodont jaws with teeth. The rock is ten million years older than the rock at the Cove, and this is helping scientists to assess the changes to the dinosaur population of south-eastern Australia over that time.