Dinosaur Cove Cretaceous 1: Attack of the Lizard King

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They lived millions of years ago, which means they were here before people, insects, and even flowers. Subsequent scientific analysis of the fossil material, by a range of scientists including geochemists, palaeobotanists, palaeontologists and geologists, soon revealed more unusual and exciting information.

The movie is very refreshing in how clean it is (no swearing, bad attitude or disrespectful behavior). The eggs were laid by a pterodactyl that escaped from a secret genetics and animal cloning laboratory. Tom named the new discovery Kyrorycytes cadburyi, after its cold-digging habits and the chocolate manufacturer, who was generous enough to help him keep his promise. Helen Wilson says people’s reactions to the living conditions ranged from “indifference to complaining to shock and hysteria”. Bill Hopkins notes “All the girls and women seemed to love working with the noisy tools” then adds cheekily, “all the boys and men loved watching them do it”.

Some quality finds were uncovered, including the pelvis of an unidentified theropod and some ‘weird’ leg bones from a leaellynasaur, which Lesley Kool counts as one of the highlights of her work on the project. They were the dominant terrestrial animals for over 150 million years and still hold a prominent place in the study of palaeontology and in popular culture. However, the sight of their equipment strewn up and down the shoreline was a sobering lesson for all. There was never a dull moment in camp according to Helen Wilson, with spirits highest in the evenings after a few drinks. During the Early Cretaceous the location was a flood plain within a great rift valley that formed as Australia started to separate northward from Antarctica.

For several weeks each summer, the Rich family, and a crew of hardy volunteers, battled untold obstacles to wrestle fossils from the base of the cliff. Down at the cliff face, the camaraderie and one-upmanship saw the girls giving the guys as good as they got. Their story makes fascinating reading, as does the larger story of the trials and triumphs involved in their discovery.If climatic conditions then were even remotely similar to Antarctica today, the Gondwanan dinosaurs must have experienced cold winters and months of near-darkness – a challenge not confronted by any known reptile. Because neither of these tunnels produced significant finds, Tom decided to blast a cross-tunnel connecting the two. As for what is a “dinosaur” many people say that any creature that has lived for more than 65 million years ago qualifies as one, this would mean that birds, fish, mammals are all included in this classification. A more modest affair, this time there were no helicopters – volunteers had to resort to bamboo poles slung over their shoulders to transfer heavy gear down the cliff.

In the last 30 million years the sediments have been uplifted to form the Otway Ranges and Strzelecki Ranges, bringing them near the surface again. There are many different types of dinosaurs: herbivores (animals that eat plants), carnivores (animals that eat meat) and omnivores (animals that eat both). The first (west) tunnel took a fortnight to complete and was located near the western extreme of Slippery Rock. s dig included paying-participants from Earthwatch, an American organisation for science enthusiasts, who joined the volunteers.Tom Rich cringed – if getting the official nod to jackhammer had been difficult, what would the authorities say about dynamite? It was a back-breaking effort, which involved convoying bags of sand, gravel and cement from camp to shore, mixing them in a cement mixer and pouring the mix into formwork.

In the 1980s and 90s Dinosaur Cove yielded hypsilophodontid-like dinosaurs as Leaellynasaura amicagraphica and Atlascopcosaurus loadsi, and a Coelurosaur, as well as fragments of what may be a caenagnathid (relatives of the Oviraptors).The monotremes are small, egg-laying mammals and it was soon apparent that this one was an echidna-like animal, with a sprawling stance.