AUSTRALIAN AGE OF DINOSAURS

Fossil Preparation Laboratory

The Fossil Preparation Laboratory became operational on the third of July two thousand and nine, quickly becoming the most productive in the Southern Hemisphere. On that same day the Museum announced three new Australian dinosaur species to the world. Their names were Australovenator wintonensis (nicknamed Banjo), Diamantinasaurus matildae (known as Matilda) and Wintonotitan wattsi (nicknamed Clancy). The Laboratory team, including Museum staff, volunteer technicians and our enthusiastic palaeontologists, have successfully prepared and researched many fossil specimens and also assisted in the scientific publishing and naming of Savannasaurus elliottorum (known as Wade) and Australia’s most complete pterosaur Ferrodraco lentoni (named Butch after a muchadmired mayor of Winton who died in two thousand and seventeen).

The Laboratory is located approximately 500 metres from the Reception Centre, where visitors arrive. Those working in the Laboratory perform all the preparation, preservation and restoration work necessary to enable prehistoric animal fossils to be scientifically studied and displayed to our visitors. The dinosaur fossils are usually preserved in solid-rock boulders or covered in thick bands of ironstone matrix (a mass of fine-grained rock) and it is often a long and time-consuming task to chisel the rock away. Fossil preparation includes mechanical preparation of the bones with pneumatic scribes that remove rock from the encased fossils. Other preparation activities include restoration, repairs, consolidation of specimens, sieving, sorting of matrix for microfossils and jig-saw puzzling bone fragments together. Fossil discoveries are made in the Laboratory every day during the preparation process and completely new prehistoric Australian animals are closer than ever to being scientifically described. Our Laboratory staff encourage visitors to help with this preparation by becoming Honorary Technicians through a ten-day fossil preparation course at the Museum.

Four professional palaeontologists have been closely involved with the Museum collection for many years:

- Firstly, Dr Alex Cook, former Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology and Senior Curator of Geosciences at the Queensland Museum. Alex is a widely published researcher recognised for his work on invertebrate faunas of the Great Artesian Basin and the Palaeozoic Era of north Queensland.

- Secondly, Dr Scott Hocknull, Senior Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the Queensland Museum who, in two thousand and nine, was first author on the paper that named Diamantinasaurus matildae, Australovenator wintonensis and Wintonotitan wattsi.

- Thirdly, Dr Stephen Poropat, a postdoctoral researcher in palaeontology at Swinburne University of Technology and close research associate of the Museum. Dr Poropat scientifically described Savannasaurus elliottorum and described the first sauropod skull ever recovered from Australia, referring it to the species Diamantinasaurus.

- Finally, Dr Matt White, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of New England whose research includes working on the skeletal range of motion to rebuild the muscles and tendons of Australovenator's forearms and hind limbs.

Reception Centre and Collection Room

The Reception Centre was designed by Cox Rayner Architects in Brisbane, as a pro-bono contribution to the Museum, and built by Woollam Constructions in two thousand and eleven. The building was officially opened by the then Federal Minister for Regional Australia, Simon Crean, on the eighth of April two thousand and twelve, having been built on a budget of $940,000 from federal government funding, plus much sponsor and donor support.

As you stand in the foyer of the Reception Centre you will see how the building has been designed to blend into the surrounding jump-up rock, and the earthy hues and textures of the surrounding landscape. The concrete walls of the building were coloured and stamped with latex mats that were moulded from the rock surface of The Jump-Up rock by the Elliott family, who founded the Museum. A large contingent of volunteers contributed to the final aesthetic finishes of the building including corten-steel panels and landscaping.

The Reception Centre contains the Museum Shop, Cretaceous Café, staff facilities and a fossil holotype room known as the Collection Room. A life-sized five-metre-long bronze statue of Australovenator stands at the entrance to the Reception Centre. Digitally sculpted by palaeo-artist Travis Tischler, the statue was cast by Deep in the Heart Foundry in Texas, America and funded by the John Villiers Trust.

The Collection Room is only accessible by guided tour as it houses the Museum’s most valuable fossils – its holotype specimens. A holotype is the specimen from which the name of the species is described. For example, the holotype of Tyrannosaurus rex (a partial skull and skeleton) discovered in nineteen hundred and two is used as the holotype to describe all subsequently described Tyrannosaurus rex fossils.

At the time of recording the Collection Room houses the holotype fossil bones of Australia's most complete sauropod dinosaurs Diamantinasaurus matildae, sauropod Savannasaurus elliottorum, the most complete theropod dinosaur Australovenator wintonensis and pterosaur Ferrodraco lentoni. The specimens are displayed in a semi-circle around a public stage where visitors can view the fossils as part of daily guided tours run by the Museum.

Gondwana Stars Observatory

The Gondwana Stars Observatory was officially opened on the eighth of May two thousand and twenty one as part of the Museum’s Dynamic Destination project, using $780,000 of Queensland government funding. The Observatory was designed by Cox Architects to showcase the extraordinary dark skies above The Jump-Up, as verified through its designation as Australia’s first International Dark-Sky Sanctuary. If you look closely at the walls of the building you will be able see the jet-black concrete render that has been made to look and feel like a meteorite in the middle of a simulated impact crater, reflecting the bolide impacts that have caused world extinction events throughout deep time. Despite the chasm of time that separates us, when dinosaurs roamed western Queensland some stars and satellites might have been a little closer or a little further away, and the days would have been an hour shorter, but overall the skies above would have looked almost identical to what we see today.

March of the Titanosaurs Exhibition

The March of the Titanosaurs exhibition was officially opened on the eight of May two thousand and twenty one as part of the Museum’s Dynamic Destination project funded by the Queensland Government. The Museum received $5.8 million for the whole project of which $3.2 million was allocated for this exhibition.

This building was designed by Cox Architects to display the 60-metre-long trackway discovered on a property near Winton and relocated to The Jump-Up. The trackway represents the best example of sauropod tracks in Australia and is comparable to some of the best in the world.

The trackway was discovered after becoming partially exposed in the January two thousand floods when a small creek broke its banks and carved a new channel course. While the property owner saw large impressions in the exposed rock shelf, he didn’t initially recognise them as footprints. It wasn’t until two thousand and sixteen that the Museum learned of the trackway. After 16 years exposed to the elements parts of the trackway had begun to deteriorate and break apart. Damage to the trackway included broken and collapsed edges, fragmented surfaces and a section of sauropod trample tracks that had been completely obliterated by ensuing flood events. The creek was also congested with prickly acacia trees some of which were growing within the sauropod tracks.

In early two thousand and eighteen Museum staff and volunteers excavated around the trackway using earthmoving machinery and a blast hose connected to a high-volume air compressor. The blast hose removed the final layer of soil and debris without marking the trackway surface. Once uncovered the trackway was found to be around ten metres wide and 60 metres long. The trackway petered out about one metre below the bottom of the gully at one end, and disappeared at the other end where it came into contact with the upper black-soil layer. The closer to the surface, the more its preservation had deteriorated. The trackway section at the bottom of the gully was a trample zone where several sauropods had walked across it 95 million years ago. It consisted of large circles of rock (10 to 20 centimetres high and thick) in soft yellow sandstone and was extremely fragile.

When herds of sauropods roamed western Queensland, the landscape was covered in temperate rainforests and muddy billabongs. This was a land capable of sustaining a diverse ecosystem that included pterosaurs, lungfish, small mammals, turtles and, preserved on the trackway itself, crocodiles, ornithopods and tiny theropods.

Due to its fragility and location, the sauropod trample zone, which comprises about twenty percent of the total trackway area, was not expected to survive any further exposure to water or mud. Between June and September two thousand and eighteen over 400 litres of paraloid was applied to this section to harden it enough to pedestal and cover each ring of rock with a plaster jacket. The entire trample zone was carefully removed over the next three months. The remaining trackway was relocated to The Jump-Up over the next two and half years and is now permanently housed and preserved for future generations to appreciate and study.

Dinosaur Canyon Outpost

Dinosaur Canyon Outpost and its adjacent Outdoor Galleries were finished in April two thousand and seventeen through a combination of government funds, private sponsorship and the Museum's contributions from operating funds. The outdoor installations commence from the Outpost, perched on the cliff overlooking Dinosaur Canyon, and extend 300 metres along an elevated concrete pathway throughout the gorge below. Five outdoor galleries are positioned along the pathway, which resembles a treetop walk as it winds throughout massive boulders and thick vegetation below the rim of a gorge. The Dinosaur Canyon exhibits recreate life as it would have appeared about 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, including a dinosaur stampede, a Pterodactylus family, Kunbarrasaurus ieversi the Death in the Billabong scene and the Valley of the Cycads.

Death in the Billabong Exhibit

This is the Macmillan Littlewood Gallery featuring the Death in the Billabong exhibit. Sauropods, or long-necked dinosaurs, are the most common fossils we discover in the Winton Formation. In most cases it is likely that the large animals became bogged in the mud, eventually dying of exposure or starvation and being easily scavenged by predators. This happens today with modern day animals.

This exhibit is a representation of a large sauropod carcass that would have died around 95 million years ago, and before the fossil preservation process had begun. Just like today, when scavengers come in and eat the decaying flesh, the bones are scattered over a wide area making it unlikely that a full skeleton could ever be found.

The most common fossils recovered are limb bones, vertebrae and ribs – in keeping with the bones that sunk into the mud before predation. The preservation of these fossils is a simple process. Many of the dinosaur fossils we find around Winton are with sedimentary rock. As the water hole or creeks filled with water the mud or fine sediment eventually settled out of the water. The water was then redirected, forming water streams and waterholes. This process leads us to believe that all the bones would have been preserved under water where the sediment settled over a long period of time and turned into mudstone.

Some of the large sauropod bones we find are crushed or broken and we believe this is because, as water holes and creeks dried up or were filled with sediment, dinosaurs were forced to walk through the mud to get a drink. Like the trample zone at the March of the Titanosaurs exhibition, it is likely that sauropods roamed in herds, walking through muddy billabongs in search of water and food, and leaving a trail of distinctive footprints in their wake. The smaller footprints found alongside the sauropod tracks at the March of the Titanosaurs exhibition are also present in this installation. These smaller animals existed at the same time as massive sauropods, perhaps closely following herds of sauropods for both protection and food scraps.

This exhibit is a wonderful example of how our dinosaur dig deposits would have looked 95 million years ago.

Pterodactylus Family Exhibit

This is the Denise O'Boyle Gallery featuring the Pterodactylus Family exhibit. The pterosaurs in this gallery were modelled on a small form known as Pterodactylus. This is a small family group as they may have appeared in real life 115 million years ago. They would have had small conical teeth, useful for grabbing small aquatic vertebrates or fish. This species lived in the late Jurassic Period in what is now Germany. In two thousand and nineteen Ferrodraco lentoni, a pterosaur found on a property in Winton and the most complete pterosaur fossil from Australia, was scientifically described. This local pterosaur had a wingspan of about four meters and spike-shaped teeth suggesting Ferrodraco was well suited to catching and eating fish. Just like birds today Pterodactylus are thought to have travelled long distances and were perhaps even migratory. It is quite possible that the few pterosaurs found in Australia are related to other pterosaurs found elsewhere in the world.

Dinosaur Stampede Exhibit

The Wavish Family Gallery features the Dinosaur Stampede exhibit with its 24 small dinosaurs leaping across a chasm to escape the clutches of a five-metre-long theropod dinosaur. The models are based on ornithopods and small theropods found in Australia, and on the trace fossils found at Dinosaur Stampede National Monument at Lark Quarry Conservation Park, 110 kilometres southwest of Winton.

It is rare to find fossils of small animals in the Winton area, however, the thousands of fossilised footprints observed at Dinosaur Stampede National Monument highlight how common smaller dinosaurs were around 95 million years ago. The footprints of the small theropods are named Skartopus and the ornithopod footprints are Wintonopus. These names only refer to the footprints and not to the animal themselves.

On the same site there are 11 large theropod tracks named Tyrannosauropus. After extensive research scientists have discovered that the footprints of the large theropod match perfectly those of the fossils from Australovenator. It makes sense that the smaller dinosaurs were an important source of prey for a large theropod like Australovenator. This stampede theory is based on the original research published by Dr Tony Thulborn and Dr Mary Wade in nineteen eighty-four.

Kunbarrasaurus Ieversi Exhibit

The John Villiers Gallery features the Kunbarrasaurus ieversi exhibit. Kunbarrasaurus represents the most complete Mesozoic dinosaur ever found in Australia. This exhibit showcases three life-sized models based on the original skeleton discovered between Richmond and Hughenden. The models depict how the armoured dinosaurs would have looked 104 to 102 million years ago. It was originally thought to be the genus of Minmi, given its similarity to the specimen Minmi paravertebra found in Roma. However, in two thousand and fifteen palaeontologists concluded that the two specimens were, in fact, distinct and the specimen from the Richmond/Hughenden region was reclassified as Kunbarrasaurus ievesi.

The fossilised skeleton of Kunbarrasaurus was extremely well preserved, with the animal’s armour plates in life position. The extraordinary preservation also extends to its gut contents giving palaeontologists valuable information into its last moments, such as the animal’s last meal of flowering plants, fruit and seeds.

While Kunbarrasaurus was a land-living dinosaur, its remains were found in the sediments deposited at the bottom of an ancient inland sea. The armour plates and skin played an important role in the preservation process as they shrunk and shrink-wrapped the skeleton. It is most likely that Kunbarrasaurus died close to a water course and, when the area flooded, it was swept out to sea where it sank to the bottom of the sea floor.