Earlier this month – July 4-8, 2011 – was my third time to see the wondrous Cretaceous fossils of Queensland, Australia. But it was my first with university students in tow to share in that paleontologically inspired excitement. Our trip together to outback Queensland was during the third week of a five-week program for Emory University students taking a study-abroad program in Australia, taught by me and my good friend (and oh yeah, colleague) Steve Henderson from Oxford College of Emory. We did this trip to give them a taste of what life was like in the modern-day outback and 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, when theropod dinosaurs like Australovenator wintonensis (“Banjo”) likely chowed down on hapless ornithopod dinosaurs, and the whopping pliosaur Kronosaurus queenlandicus was ruling the inland seaway that covered much of the area we saw during our trip.
Life was good during the Early Cretaceous – about 110 million years ago – in what would some day become Queensland, Australia. That is, life was good for whatever was making tucker out of whatever else was alive at that time. In that sense, then, when it came to the Cretaceous seaway that covered much of inland Australia then, few animals enjoyed life more than the giant marine reptile Kronosaurus queenlandicus. Fancy a dive in the Cretaceous sea of Queensland? You’d have a lot more to worry about than running into a box jellyfish, blue-winged octopus, or great white shark, mate, like a bloody huge Kronosaurus. Artwork is on a tapestry (batik?) in Kronosaurus Korner, Richmond, Queensland, and the presumed artist is Paul Stumkat, who’s also the curator and fossil preparator there. (When you do paleontology in central Queensland, you have to wear a lot of hats.)
