Dinosaur Dreaming

Summary of Dinosaur Dreaming 2000

Lesley Kool

The crew members of the Dinosaur Dreaming 2000 field season knew that it was going to be difficult to improve on the previous year's results. But much to our delight that is exactly what we did and produced the best field season to date. Not only did we catalogue nearly 1000 bones and teeth, but we also found four more tiny mammal jaws. Two jaws were identified during the dig; the other two did not come to light until after the dig when the laborious task of checking all the collected specimens began. It was only after closer scrutiny that the third and fourth jaws were identified and prepared, resulting in the most jaws found in one season.

Three of the mammal jaws recovered this field season belong in the family Ausktribosphenidae, but at least one of them is a new genus and species, which Tom Rich elaborates on in his report. The fourth mammal jaw is possibly the second specimen of Teinolophus trusleri collected from this site. Unfortunately, this second specimen is lacking teeth, but possesses other features, which enable Tom to place it within this group of enigmatic mammals.

The preparation of the tiny mammal jaws was greatly enhanced by the expertise of Charles (Chuck) Schaff. Chuck was invited by Tom and Pat Rich to advise and assist in the preparation of a particularly difficult specimen that was discovered during the Dinosaur Dreaming 1999 field season. Chuck is currently head preparator at Harvard University in Boston, U.S.A., and has worked on fossil mammals for the last 30 years.

The mammal jaws were not the only success of the season. It appears that at least two possible bird bones were also collected, which Professor Pat Vickers-Rich will be studying in the near future along with at least 3 other specimens collected in previous years. Fossil bird bones are very rare in the fossil record. Bird bones are thin-walled and hollow, which means they are often destroyed before they can be preserved. Fossil bird feathers have been known from another Early Cretaceous site near Koonwarra in South Gippsland. These feathers were discovered in the 1960's when the South Gippsland Highway was developed through the Strzelecki Ranges. Six small down feathers were the only evidence of birds in the Early Cretaceous until a small furcula was recovered less than a week before the first mammal jaw turned up during the 1997 field season. This small bone gave us the first skeletal evidence of birds and since then a number of other small gracile hollow bones have been recovered.

The Dinosaur Dreaming 2000 field season also produced more theropod dinosaur teeth than in the previous three field seasons. Ten theropod teeth have been prepared since the end of this year's dig, all are "shed" teeth, having fallen from the mouths of the small meat-eating dinosaurs while they were still alive. All have serrations on the front edge of the tooth, but not along the back edge. This is unusual, as most theropod dinosaur teeth from elsewhere in the world have serrations on both the front and back of the tooth. Since collecting at the Flat Rocks site began in 1992, nearly 50 theropod dinosaur teeth have been recovered. Hopes were high this year to find a theropod dinosaur jaw or skull fragment with teeth in it, so a more accurate identification of this group of dinosaurs could be made. But, to no avail. Maybe next year.

This year saw a number of skull fragments of dinosaurs turn up at Flat Rocks. Coupled with those that have been found previously, the quantity of such specimens from both Flat Rocks and Dinosaur Cove that have not yet been adequately identified is impressive. Courtesy of the National Geographic Society, Pat Vickers-Rich and I shall have an opportunity in November to visit a number of museums in North America to look in particular at the skulls of hypsilophodontids and small theropods in order to try and at least get started with determining just what these skull fragments represent. It was with pleasure, too, that we were able to name a new dinosaur, Qantassaurus intrepidus, illustrated on the front cover of this report, after Qantas airways. The type specimen, from the Flat Rocks site, is a lower jaw found by Nicole Evered. This honour is well deserved for the long support Qantas has given for dinosaur research and exhibitions.