Schoers' Travels: 07/22/13

WALKING WITH DINOSAURS…IN AUSTRALIA!

Who would have thought that the film to be released later this year, COULD, have been based in ancient Australia? We were convinced that this would be possible after the experience below…Blog 3 in a series tracking Bronlyn and Gary’s three months in a campervan to Western Australia

Walking with Dinosaurs…1 minute trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P_7w2JB2NU

Winton is now waltzing to a different tune with the opening of the Australian Age of Dinosaurs (AASOD) museum site on top of a scenic “jump-up” just 23 km out of town. We were attracted back to Winton with stories of a new museum to learn about Australia’s 100 million years or so Reptilian megafauna, after following the Dinosaur Trail in this region six years ago.

Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum...with guard

These dinosaur fossils masqueraded as rocks jutting out of the Mitchell Grass for decades until a local grazier, Dave Elliot, suspected that they had a dramatic story to tell. Local people and enthusiastic tourists have provided the work force to create a stampede of citizen scientists willing to spend some spare time searching for and extracting the bones from the tough siltstone. This rock had once been the mud that encased the nicknamed Banjo, Clancy and Matilda in the mud of a retreating inland sea. Black soil must often be removed to reveal these giant carnivores and herbivores.

Finding fossils in siltstone beneath black soil overburden...citizen scientists at work (AAOD pic)

Here, on this isolated jump-up, Dave and Judy Elliot’s vision is being realised to enrich the other dinosaur experiences in Winton, Hughenden, Richmond, Boulia and Mount Isa. The Lark Quarry Dinosaur stampede site, unique in the world, also out of Winton has earned its place in Australia’s Natural Heritage Register, and no doubt, this new facility will open up new frontiers of Dinosaur research and discoveries.

View over Dinosaur Central from the Jump-up site

of Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum site

We were introduced to the AAOD at its recently opened “holo-type room” where a guide walked us through displays of real bones and dinosaur reconstructions, all augmented by audio-visual presentations of their 3-D nature and mobility simulations.

Reconstructed carnivorous dinosaur

Dinosaur Bones released from rocky prison

We then moved onto the separate “Dinosaur Laboratory” where our guide, Steve, enthusiastically pointed out the dozens of massive, unstudied bones enshrouded in plastered hessian after first being wrapped in alfoil and wet newspaper in the field.

Protected bone collections still shrouded in mystery

An opened bone "capsule" ready for removal from encasing rock

“Three weeks digging creates five years of materials and work for the volunteers” he said.

Steve can't help admiring jigsawing skills of volunteers who reassembled the shattered vertebrae of this dinosaur

We met a couple of keen volunteers in the lab who showed us how a dental drill look-alike was used to chip back the white stone from the brown-stained silica fossil. One such instrument is capable of removing a grain at a time.

This volunteer is on second trip from Tasmania...she loves the work.

Volunteers pay for the privilege of being the front-line workers. Training is free and mutual praise flows freely, some even lending their name to more exotic finds until studied by the scientists. “We do all the real work”, said Steve. ” We dig them out and clean them up, then the ‘doctors’ (PHD scientists) scratch their heads for a while and publish their conclusions”. Steve may well be biased, but generous donations and government support has created the biggest Dinosaur Palaentology facility in the Southern Hemisphere.