Scientists have unearthed a 100-million year-old dinosaur fossil in Western Queensland. The Elasmosaurus was commonly found across inland parts of Australia and is the world's first discovery of the dinosaur fully intact. Scientists have unearthed a 100-million-year-old dinosaur fossil in Western Queensland.
The bones belong to a sauropod type of dinosaur called a Diamantinasaurus matildae. It's the most complete sauropod skull ever found in Australia and shows the shape of the animal's head for the first time. The creatures are known for having small heads, long necks and tails, barrel-like bodies and four columnar legs.
The bones of Rhoetosaurus brownei as they were found in 1924, eroding out of the banks of a gully on a station north of Roma, south-western Queensland.
Dinosaur fossils are not as common in Australia as some other countries, but there is good evidence it was home to many large and small dinosaurs, which lived in the forest and wetlands.
T. rex lived 68-66 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period, in what is now Canada and the USA. There have been no specimens of T. rex reported outside of North America.
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The most complete skeleton of Deinonychus ever found was named Hector, and now belongs to a private collector. This dino's name is quite a mouthful! Discovered in Brazil in 2021, it is the rarest dinosaur, and lived between 70 and 80 million years ago. Palaeontologists think it was toothless.
Australotitan cooperensis
Based on skeletal remains found so far, 'Cooper' is Australia's largest dinosaur. Named after Cooper Creek and the Cooper Basin where this dinosaur was found. Discovered by landholders, Stuart and Robyn Mackenzie on their property west of Eromanga in 2006.
Australotitan cooperensis is now a new species of a type of dinosaur called sauropods, which had long necks and tails, as well as four legs, and ate plants. The researchers say the new species is closely related to three other sauropods found in Australia that date to the same time period.
Hadrosaurus lived about 80 million years ago late in the Cretaceous Period. Hadrosaurus is a famous dinosaur because it was the most complete dinosaur skeleton unearthed anywhere in the world when it was discovered and scientifically documented in 1858.
Dinosaur fossils are harder to find in Australia than elsewhere in the world because of our geology, says Herne. Our continent has been subject to 30-odd million years of erosion and weathering, so palaeontologists have smaller areas of suitable exposed rock to look at when searching for fossils.
Of the carnivorous dinosaurs discovered in Australia so far the largest is Australovenator wintonensis, which was discovered in the more well-known fossil fields around Winton, some 660 kilometres north of Eromanga.
"The new fossil is the first example of a spinosaurid dinosaur from Australia," says Paul Barrett Natural History Museum dinosaur expert who led this study. "It is almost identical to the Natural History Museum's own Baryonyx specimen from England."
Australia in the Cretaceous was very different from today with volcanoes, shallow inland seas and great rift valleys. The southern supercontinent Gondwana included Australia, South America, Africa, India, Antarctica and others.
Giganotosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex did not live on the earth at the same time. Giganotosaurus was bigger and faster, but T-Rex had a stronger bite force and more teeth. In a fight between Giganotosaurus and T-Rex, the Tyrannosaurus would win.
Measuring 11 metres in length, Ollie is the smallest sauropod in Australia.
Bizarre 500-toothed dinosaur
Nigersaurus, you might remember, we named for bones collected on the last expedition here three years ago. This sauropod (long-necked dinosaur) has an unusual skull containing as many as 500 slender teeth.
The Brontosaurus was gone at last, but Lamanna suggests the name stuck in part because it was given at a time when the Bone Wars fueled intense public interest in the discovery of new dinosaurs.
They existed long before our time, and there are no dinosaurs left today.
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The fossil was first discovered near Winton in 2010 by palaeontologists, and took more than six years to piece together. It's the first skeletal remains of an ornithopod reported in the region and the first evidence that crocodiles ate dinosaurs in Australia.
The vast majority of the dinosaur fossils discovered by the AAOD Museum are from the earliest Late Cretaceous period and are approximately 98-95 million years old.
65 million years ago marks the end of the Cretaceous Period, and is when dinosaurs go extinct. Dinosaurs like the T-rex, or Veolocirpator have never existed with humans, and we are separated by about 65 million years. Dinosaurs went extinct before early humans or even neanderthals.
Doing this helped provide more evidence for scientists to confirm that the chicken is currently the closest living relative to the T-Rex. Even before discovering the evidence from the fossil, some scientists observed that chickens and the T-Rex had similar characteristics.