Tuesday, February 9, 2010 Previous editions
Saturday, July 04, 2009
AUSTRALIAN scientists hailed the country’s most significant dinosaur discovery in decades yesterday after three new species were unearthed in Queensland.
The flesh-eating theropod — dubbed Australia’s answer to the Jurassic Park velociraptors — and two sauropods had lain in a98 million-year-old geological deposit until a recent archaeological dig.
Scientists said the three, named Banjo, Matilda and Clancy in honour of Australia’s famous song, Waltzing Matilda, opened up an exciting new front in dinosaur research.
"!This is amazing stuff," said John Long, head of sciences at Museum Victoria.
"I would regard the paper by Scott Hocknull and his team as one of the most significant papers ever published on Australian dinosaurs to date."
Queensland Museum researcher Hocknull and his team found the fossils in the billabong, or small lake, near the Outback town of Winton, where poet Banjo Paterson is said to have written Waltzing Matilda in 1885.
The team used bulldozers to carve through the site’s topsoil before digging with hand tools in the thick clay beneath, back-breaking work that yielded Australia’s first major dinosaur discovery since 1981.
Hocknull compared the theropod, from the tyrannosaurus rex family, to the velociraptors made famous in the 1993 film Jurassic Park, only "many times bigger and more terrifying".
"He could run down most prey with ease over open ground. His most distinguishing feature was three large slashing claws on each hand," Hocknull said.
"Unlike some theropods that have small arms, Banjo was different. His arms were a primary weapon. He’s Australia’s answer to avelociraptor but many times bigger and more terrifying.
The plant-eating Matilda and Clancy belong to the giant titanosaur family, the biggest creatures ever to walk the earth.
"These discoveries are a major breakthrough in the scientific understanding of prehistoric life in Australia," said state premier Anna Bligh, as she announced the find in Winton.
Scientists said Australia’s continent-sized Outback could hold untold treasures for paleontologists.
"When we think of dinosaurs we think North America, Europe, South America and Africa — not Australia," said Rod Wells, of Flinders University.
"Australia is the exciting new frontier in vertebrate paleontology, a continent as large as North America awaiting exploration."
Hocknull believes there are more discoveries to be made: "Many hundreds more fossils from this dig await preparation and there is much more material left to excavate."
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