Cretaceous Worlds of Queensland, Part III: Hughenden, on the Edge of the Cretaceous

If you want to visit the former locations of the Cretaceous seaway that cut through Australia 100 million years ago, as well as its coastal and landward environs, the easiest way to do this is to fly into Townsville, Queensland (mentioned in last week’s entry), rent a car, and drive west.

This is the point in the narrative where someone might invoke the cliché, “Go west, young man,” but I do not qualify as “young” any more, plus my wife - Ruth – was with me on this journey. Thus inclusivity, as oppposed to ageism and sexism, negate my saying that phrase. Regardless, I try to avoid clichés like the plague, but your mileage may vary, depending on how you roll the dice. (After all, no matter where you go, there you are.)

A paleogeographic map of northeastern Queensland 100 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period; map from the Museum of Tropical Queensland. Arrow points to Hughenden, the subject of this post. Notice how that area was coastal then (the white part represents the inland sea). Also note the inconvenient lack of roads during the Cretaceous.

Renting a car in Townsville for going into the Australian outback can be a bit tricky, as rental agencies frown on their vehicles going onto unsealed surfaces, including dirt roads. In sympathy with rental agency employees, who probably have a litany of horror stories about crazy foreigners destroying life, limb, and (most importantly from their perspective), property, I certainly understand the “off-road” restriction for a car that does not have four-wheel-drive, roll bars, exhaust pipe running above the roof, Kevlar tires, and other battle-ready accoutrements that many Australians advocate for driving in their continental interior. But to me, it seems too cautious to keep perfectly fine all-wheel-drive (AWD) cars off dirt roads that are marked clearly on a standard road map and government maintained.

So for the sake of privacy and not wanting to offend the agency that so kindly rented us a vehicle, please consider any mentions of driving on dirt roads as pure fiction.

The sport “ute” (utility vehicle) used for field work in Victoria, Australia during The Great Cretaceous Walk in May-June 2010, courtesy of the Museum of Victoria. This is the type of field vehicle you need to take for dealing with the harsh Australian outback, although a good number of Australians in recent years have been using them for just driving to Woolie’s to stock up on vegemite and VB. Alas, we lacked such a vehicle in Queensland, yet we somehow survived.

We did take one serious precaution that many of our Australian friends suggested, which was to keep lots of water in the car. This safeguard is in case you get a flat tire or otherwise break down several hundred kilometers from the next town, as help might be a long time in coming and you should have plenty of drinking water on hand. Fortunately, Townsville has many grocery stores that stock 20-liter jugs of water, so we purchased two of these and kept them in the “boot” (or “trunk,” for all you Yanks out there). Incidentally, these jugs rode several thousand kilometers with us and ultimately returned unused to Townsville, which we donated to our hotel before departing. Oh well: better safe than thirsty.

Properly stocked with our sloshing supply of dihydrogen monoxide (the deadliest substance known to humankind), we left on the morning of June 30, and drove southwest for about three hours – passing through only a few pub-hotel “towns” along the way – before arriving at the first paleontologically significant town, Hughenden. I had visited Hughenden about three years previously (2007) during a whirlwind weekend trip from Townsville to the outback (and back), and was looking forward to seeing it again. Of course, I was also curious how it might have changed during the intervening time.

What to see in Hughenden, and why stop there, especially if someone is eager to make it to Winton? Well, how could a dino-phile avoid pausing for a visit after being greeted by a life-sized replica of the ornithopod dinosaur Muttaburrasaurus langdoni? This prodigious example of paleo-statuary is hard to miss, and is easily spotted on the right side of the road as you drive into town, located next to an old-fashioned outback pub hotel (sadly closed).

The large and very friendly Cretaceous ornithopod dinosaur Muttaburrasaurus, a roadside icon for Hughenden. Look at the size of this beauty! Photo by Ruth Schowalter.

Hughenden also has a very nicely arranged display of local fossils and some information about the local natural and human history, housed in the Flinders Discovery Centre. For only $3.50 (AUD) admission, you can see a short film about the geologic history of the area (which actually was quite good), walk and gawk through the display to your heart’s content, take as many photos as your digital-memory card can hold, and otherwise enjoy learning about the rich natural history of central Queensland. The star of the display, though, is a mounted cast of a Muttaburrasaurus skeleton.

If you didn’t like the Disney version of Muttaburrasaurus pictured earlier, here’s the Tim Burton one, which can be viewed in all of its awesomeness in the Flinders Discovery Centre.

This dinosaur, besides having what is probably the most fun-to-say dinosaur name (other than Micropachycephalosaurus), is the largest known ornithopod in Australia, which was apparently overrun with smaller, “hypsilophodontid” dinosaurs, especially in Victoria. Also unlike the Cretaceous dinosaurs of Victoria, this dinosaur is known from a nearly complete skeleton, including a skull. It derived its colorful name from a small town south of Hughenden near where it was found – Muttaburra – which in turn is named after an indigenous word, meaning “meeting of the waters.” This is a very insightful appellation, reflecting how this now-dry (almost desert) area did indeed meet a Cretaceous seaway 100 million years ago.

Other fossils are in the Flinders Discovery Centre, most of them Cretaceous, and most of them local, thus showcasing the paleontological importance of this area for understanding Cretaceous life in Australia. In fact, bones from some of the Cretaceous marine reptiles, giant clams (Inoceramus), and ammonites were recognized in this area during the mid 19^th century. Many such fossils – most of them real – were out in the open, allowing for unfettered photography, and those below glass in cabinets also beckoned for a close look. (And just as a curmudgeonly aside, I love these smaller, local museums for putting real fossils on display, eschewing the “bells-and-whistles” virtual-reality displays embraced by so many other museums in recent years.)

Wow, look, real Cretaceous fossils! In this case, ammonites of all shapes and sizes, with a modern Nautilus thrown in for contrast and scale.

This beautiful fossil decapod, simply labeled as “Crayfish,” is most likely a marine species, and not a freshwater crayfish (“yabby”) for which Australia is famous. Its label also says it is from the Cretaceous, so it would be nice some day to know its exact taxonomic affinity. After all, I have a keen fondness for Australian freshwater crayfish from the Cretaceous.

And you just knew this ichnologist was not going to neglect mentioning trace fossils, and the center had a few displays about those, too.

Cast of a large Australian theropod dinosaur track, which was labeled as “Allosaurus footprint,” but is probably not from that genus, which is North American. (Close enough, as it certainly was made by a large, Allosaurus-sized theropod, though – so no harm done.)

Branching invertebrate burrows preserved in a limestone as natural casts. These burrows are what most ichnologists would call Thalassinoides, trace fossils that are normally associated with crustacean tracemakers.

Ruth was delighted with the artistic portrayals of dinosaurs in the center, some of which would no doubt evoke snickers, chuckles, chortles, and outright guffaws from some of my paleontologically oriented friends because of their postural and chromatic inaccuracy (the dinosaurs, that is, not my paleo-friends). Nonetheless, we enjoyed seeing these included in the display area too, and appreciate all of the local effort that went into constructing these homages to all things dinosaurian.

Kitschy dinosaur-inspired sculptures in the Flinders Discovery Centre, which I think are of an ornithopod (left) and sauropod (right). And if you don’t like them, make your own bloody dinosaurs!

And if that isn’t enough to satisfy any artistic yearnings, metal sculptures of a dinosaur and pterosaurs adorn public spaces outside the center, lending some whimsy along with the well-deserved local pride.

It’s not Truckasaurus, but it’s pretty close. Nicknamed “Darby the Dinosaur,” this sculpture was inspired by Muttaburrasaurus, then conceived and made in 1998 by local artists Terry Lindsay and Sam Brown. They put together whatever spare parts they could find, set their creation in concrete, and garnished it with real Cretaceous fossils (below "Darby").

This would be the last thing you would see if a pterosaur became a Transformer. (Yes, I know, big “if.”) The sculpture is nicknamed “Leanneosaur," and coincidentally, one of the artists (Shane Rogers) who created this metallic menace has a wife named Leanne. The other artist was Terry Lindsay, also partially responsible for “Darby,” and the piece was completed in 2004.

So Hughendgen is a great place to visit for paleo- and art-nerds alike (Ruth and I qualify as both). In fact, we liked Hughenden and the Discovery Centre so much, we made a point of stopping there on our way back to Townsville nearly a week later. That is when Ruth and I purchased a dinosaur hand puppet (a theropod, of course), which was put to good use in a dinner-theater performance only a few days later. (Digression? No, foreshadowing.)

So Ruth and I spent one night in Hughenden, then were off in the morning to our next stop on the “Dinosaur Trail,” which was Winton, a town that lives off past lives of the Cretaceous, as well as the much more recent past. Why? Tune in next week, when I’ll talk about Winton and its connections to paleontology, the unofficial national anthem of Australia, bush poetry, and beer (and perhaps not in that order).

Cretaceous Worlds of Queensland, Part II: In Town in Townsville

As loyal readers may already know (and new readers will learn in the remainder of this sentence), The Great Cretaceous Walk literally ended in late June 2010, but continues metaphorically as an exploration of the Cretaceous worlds of Australia: kind of a “walkabout through time.” The actual walking was done over Cretaceous rocks exposed in Victoria (such as here, here, and here), but more inwardly directed ambulating in the Cretaceous past happened in Queensland, Australia and well north of Victoria.

To see the Early Cretaceous rocks and fossils of Queensland, though, requires covering more than a few kilometers, bringing home the “variety show” that is Australia, well exemplified by just an easy day of travel in this expansive country. On such a day, my partner in paleontological pursuits (Ruth Truth) and I flew from the modern metropolis of Sydney (New South Wales) to Townsville, Queensland in just a few hours.

We went from there to there, and all in just a few hours. However much we complain about airport security, long lines, and expenses, this is the miracle of modern jet travel. Show it a little wonder, and stop whinging so much.

Townsville, Queensland from the air, with its beautiful shoreline and prominent inselberg – Castle Hill – overlooking the city. What’s an inselberg? Read on.

Nonetheless, this short trip entails a considerable change in both latitude and attitude. Townsville is a thoroughly modern town on the Queensland coast, but ensconced in a semi-tropical setting that instantly seduces, rendering the most frenzied city-dweller to sluggard status as soon as you step outside of its charmingly small airport.

Accommodations in Townsville, Queensland are not in the Cretaceous, but some days it feels like it. And that’s a good thing.

Because we were traveling during Australia’s winter – thus neatly missing the record heat of a Georgia summer – the change from the colder (albeit lovely) environs of Sydney to the embracing warmth of Townsville, accentuated by its organic briny smells of the Coral Sea and the squawks of cockatoos, was like taking, a long, slow sip of a craft beer. Which we did as soon as we arrived in downtown Townsville. (Who needs metaphor when you can have reality?)

Ruth and I had been in Townsville before, and have a fondness for it because I have spent more time here than any place else in Australia other than Melbourne. Why? In two previous visits, in 2006 and 2007, I co-taught Emory University study-abroad programs here, hosted on the lush and gorgeous campus of James Cook University. The courses offered in this program were evolutionary biology and ecology of invasions: invasive species, that is. Queensland is a fantastic place to learn natural history in general, and of Australia specifically, which is why I keep coming back to it, sometimes with students in tow, sometimes not.

It’s a jungle out there whenever you take a stroll across James Cook University (JCU) in Townsville: a very nice place to teach American uni students and observe a little bit of Australian nature on the way to and from class.

Modern theropods loose on the JCU campus! (Above) Stone-bush curlews (Burhinus grallarius), which I have seen pack-hunting during the night, but sometimes are out during the day. Make sure you look for the one hiding behind the eucalyptus tree: clever girl! (Below) A laughing kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae), a fierce carnivore with a raucous laughing call. P.S. It’s not a bloody monkey, mates!

But what of the Cretaceous in Townsville? Alas, there are no outcrops of such rocks in the area, and the most prominent geologic feature in the area is an igneous intrusion (now evident as a monadnock or inselberg) called Castle Hill (see the photo of Townsville above, and taken from above).

As a result, whatever Cretaceous rocks and fossils you might see there are in the Museum of Tropical Queensland, a lovely regional museum that neatly summarizes the natural history of this part of Queensland, including the Great Barrier Reef. To see the reef itself entails a 10-minute walk from the museum to a pier and a two-hour boat ride (or four-hours if you want to come back).

Among the displays is a fair-sized one about the Cretaceous rocks and fossils located a short drive west of Townsville. Did I say “fossils”? Yes, and best of all to an ichnologist, these included a few trace fossils along with the body fossils. Invertebrates are represented here, a few vertebrate remains, and even dinosaur tracks.

Some dinosaur tracks on display in the Museum of Tropical Queensland, preserved in a sandstone bed as natural casts, and accompanied by frustratingly little scientific information. Locality? Geologic age? Interpretations of the trackmakers and their environment? My photo was taken in 2006, though, so maybe this display has been updated since. In the meantime, feast your eyes on those tasty looking trace fossils! How many tracks do you see? How many different types of dinosaurs made them? What were they doing? And an added bonus: stylish field sunglasses for scale.

In recognition of the many small ornithopod (“hypsilophodontid”) dinosaurs whose bones keep popping up in the Cretaceous of Queensland and south of it in Victoria, the museum has a small reconstructed ornithopod on display for visitors to admire. I don’t recall which species it is supposed to represent, but it’s about the size of Leaellynasaura amicagraphica from Victoria, mentioned in some previous entries.

Aw, it’s such a cute little hypsilophodontid dinosaur! Can we take him home, mum? I promise I’ll feed him nothing but tree ferns and araucarian cones.

Body fossils include parts of former denizens from the Cretaceous seaway that cut through the eastern part of Australia about 100 million years ago. Cretaceous environments to the east and west of this seaway were where the dinosaurs roamed, but the Cretaceous sea was where dinosaurs had no say in how life was conducted.

The Cretaceous inland seaway of Australia, a great place to be alive. That is, until you got eaten by something else sharing the same seaway. Start studying the place names on the map, because we’re going to be talking about them in future entries. And yes, there will be an exam later. Display is at the Museum of Tropical Queensland.

Although the Cretaceous dinosaurs of Queensland are all the rage right now (understandably so), some of the most spectacular vertebrate fossils coming out of the outback, and just as captivating as dinosaurs, are marine reptiles. Ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs were plentiful in the Cretaceous seas of Australia, and they likely preyed on abundant squid, fish, and each other.

Skull of the Cretaceous elasmosaur Woolungasaurus glendowerensis that probably ended up as lunch for something bigger, a supposition based on the puncture marks on its skull (arrow). This is a two-for-one special, paleontologically speaking: the skull is a body fossil, whereas the toothmarks are trace fossils of whichever sea monster chomped the elasmosaur’s face.

Also impressive are the recreations of these marine animals, which the museum has hung in aesthetically pleasing ways that give a sense of scale, and lends to imagining swimming in the same Cretaceous oceans (which would not last very long if you registered as “prey” in the search images of any of these animals).

The formidable Early Cretaceous pliosaur Kronosaurus queenslandicus, lurking above and waiting for tourists to come into view. Remember those toothmarks on the elasmosaur? We have a suspect in custody.

The plesiosaur (elasmosaur) Woolungasaurus glendowerensis, recreated in full, fish-eating view, and with Kronosaurus in the background (above), and ready for its close-up (below). She’s a beauty!

An ammonite and ichthyosaur, swimming together in harmony. Suspend disbelief for a moment and forget that these are, er, suspended. Sorry to have no species information, but they are very nice to look at, aren’t they?

So with this intellectual and visual information properly lighting up your cerebral hemispheres, we will go west, to central Queensland and the former sites of those Early Cretaceous landscapes and seas that held those varied and wondrous lives. See you next week, and in the Cretaceous of Queensland, Australia!

Cretaceous Worlds of Queensland: Part I

Way back in June 2010, after completing nearly a month of field excursions exploring the Cretaceous rocks of Victoria, Australia, I had adjusted to a daily routine of expectations. These were, in no particular order: difficult access, high coastal cliffs, thick brush, dangerous waves, slippery rocks, lots of walking (and looking), and only a few trace fossils at the end of each day to show for all of this effort. Here is an artistic rendering of what it felt like out there most days:

Claude Monet’s Gros Temp à Étretat [Rough Weather at Étretat], 1883, in the National Gallery of Victoria, looking oddly familiar to me after lots of field work on the Victoria coast during their winter. I’m the one trying to hold onto my hat.

Another realization gained from field work in Victoria is that fossil bones are rare there. In all of our walking along the coast and scrutinizing more than 100 km (60+ miles) of coastline, Tom Rich (Museum of Victoria) and I did not find a single piece of bone. This hard-earned insight made me appreciate all the more the exceptional nature of those places in the Victoria with abundant bones. Moreover, the bones that have been found came at a considerable cost, especially in terms of human labor (see Dinosaur Cove for an example).

Dave Pickering, a curator and fossil preparator at the Museum of Victoria, who has a bone to pick with you. And as small as this bone is, it could have taken a few hundred hours of prospecting in the Cretaceous rocks of Victoria before someone found it, followed by yet more hours of preparation. Next time you see Dave or any volunteer who looks for fossils on the Victoria coast, please buy them a beer or its monetary equivalent.

Now, for anyone who is used to literary tricks of the trade in journalism or other forms of story-telling, you probably see a set-up here, where I give you one premise – the Cretaceous of Victoria – then shatter it by wielding the exact opposite situation – the Cretaceous of Queensland. Yes, that’s right, the old “compare-and-contrast” device, which is right up there with the “overcoming incredible odds, only to succeed through hard work and moral fortitude” Horatio Alger story.

(Incidentally, the realist in me enjoys puncturing such stories by pointing out that Horatio Alger was actually Horatio Alger, Jr., a second-generation Harvard man, who probably had the hired help pulling up his bootstraps for him. Fortunately for American literature, Mark Twain, a contemporary of Alger, had satirical responses to such stories: “Poor Little Stephen Girad” and “The Story of the Good Little Boy”), when he wasn’t already writing about trace fossils (specifically, fossil tracks of giant ground sloths).

American satirist Mark Twain, who had little tolerance for Horatio Alger, Jr.'s stories, and occasionally reported on possible trace fossils made by giant ground sloths, or, alternatively, Nevada legislators and Old Silurian asses, with the distinction purposefully blurred. Photo from Wikipedia Commons.

So I plead guilty to falling into the cliché of contrasts, but only partially. As befits a continent that straddles three time zones and about 30° of latitude – from Tasmania to tropical Queensland – Australia is teeming with environmental and geological contrasts. When you travel from the southern part of mainland Australia (Victoria) to the northern part (Queensland), some differences are expected, and indeed there are many.

Australia’s a country and a continent, mate. Image from Google Maps and modified by me.

For example, the Cretaceous of Queensland is often represented by: wide, flat areas; deeply eroded rocks with few actual outcrops; and no nearby ocean waves. (Or at least, not now. Go back 100 million years, then yes.) So this is indeed remarkably different from paleontological explorations in the slightly older Cretaceous rocks of Victoria, and requires a bit of an attitude adjustment one going from one to the other.

The outback of central Queensland (top) versus the Victoria coast (bottom). Spot any differences? Photo on top is by Ruth Schowalter, who was driving shotgun at the time.

Nonetheless, the human-perceived differences of conducting field work in Queensland versus Victoria largely end there. Paleontologists still have to work very hard to find bones or trace fossils in the Cretaceous of Queensland, just like in Victoria, although it definitely requires a different kind of effort. And even though rocks in this region of Australia have yielded some significant fossils through the years (especially in the past few years), you still need to have the right search images for finding them, and lots of human labor to recover and prepare them. More about that aspect will be discussed in future entries, and we will especially the logistical differences between finding and handling a leg bone of a small juvenile ornithopod dinosaur, versus that of an adult sauropod.

No rugged individualism is allowed when you find sauropod limb bones in the Cretaceous of Queensland. Rather, mateship is encouraged and necessary. “Gorgeous George” of the Australian Age of Dinosaurs (AAOD) Centre near Winton for scale (more about him and his mates at the AAOD later).

Perhaps what is most remarkable about paleontology in Queensland, though, is how much it has suffused into the outback culture there in just the past few decades. For example, despite more than 30 years of intensive research on dinosaurs and other fossils from the Cretaceous of Victoria, Australia’s “Dinosaur Trail” is located in Queensland. The three outback towns of Hughenden, Winton, and Richmond roughly define a triangle containing rocks rich with Cretaceous fossils, marine and terrestrial, comprised of plants, invertebrate animals, and vertebrate animals. Another outback town with a good collection of Cretaceous fossils to see is in Boulia. For younger fossils, hailing from the mere Cenozoic Era, there is also the city of Mt. Isa. These fossils are from the world-famous Riversleigh deposit, holding geologically younger and exquisitely preserved body fossils of marsupials from the Oligocene through the Miocene Epochs, from about 25-15 million years ago.

So upcoming entries will be about those places in Queensland and their fossils, told from the perspective of a Yank paleontologist, a stranger in an even stranger land, yet one that was very friendly, had many fantastic fossils to see, and (most importantly) no shortage of beer.

Cretaceous Oz: North by Northwest

Following field work in Victoria, Ruth and I went on holiday for our last few weeks in Australia, first to Sydney (New South Wales), then to Queensland. As Ruth and many other spouses/partners can attest, though, there’s one drawback with going on vacation with geologists or paleontologists. And that’s their insatiable drive to see more rocks or fossils. In that respect, then, Sydney seemed safe, being a big city with heaps of concrete and steel covering the good bits (geologically speaking). But Sydney also has great (and free!) museums, containing all of the items that catch the attention of the earth-inclined, and even has some outcrops of cross-bedded Triassic sandstone along its world-famous shorelines, including in front of the Sydney Opera House.

Why do photographs of the Sydney Opera House always omit the Triassic sandstone in front of it? This just goes to show you how even geologists can be temporarily distracted by dazzling architecture.

But how could a geologist not notice that the oldest brewpub in Australia – The Lord Nelson Brewery – is located in a part of Sydney called The Rocks? Out of a sense of scientific duty, we had to go there and sample a few of their brews, too.

A close-up of some of the local Triassic sandstone along a stairway in The Rocks part of Sydney, showing a transition from planar to rippled to some gorgeous convoluted bedding, the last a result of soft-sediment deformation, made before the sediment was cemented into rock. I can’t remember if this was seen and photographed before or after the visit to the brewery, which de facto means it was after.

Nonetheless, our main reason for going to Sydney was to view art, which was already plentiful, but made more so by a biannual art event named (oddly enough) The Biennale. Venues hosting art associated with this event were scattered throughout parts of the central business district (CBD) of Sydney, but most works were either at the Museum of Contemporary Art or on Cockatoo Island, which is located just north of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. For those of you who revel in using both sides of your brain and want to learn more about an artist’s perspective on this year’s artworks, please read Ruth’s take on it (written under her persona of Hallelujah Truth).

We also took in a few hours of the Australian Museum, which has a nicely done section on Australian indigenous cultures (including art styles of different regions), and the obligatory dinosaur hall, which seem to be required of all major natural-history museums. Nonetheless, I was pleased to see how the dinosaur-hall exhibit – which thankfully was not just about dinosaurs, but included other biota, even from outside of the Mesozoic Era – included much information based on the Cretaceous of both Victoria and Queensland.

A reconstruction of Qantassaurus intrepidus, the only dinosaur named after an airline (Qantas), but more importantly is a small ornithopod dinosaur that lived in southern Victoria during the Early Cretaceous Period, about 105 million years ago. Sadly, this detailed reproduction is mostly speculative, as this species is represented by only a few isolated bones, which also took considerable human labor to uncover.

A reconstruction of another small ornithopod from the Early Cretaceous of Victoria, Leaellynasaura amicagraphica. Unlike Qantassaurus, this dinosaur was named after a person (Leaellyn, daughter of paleontologists Tom Rich and Pat Vickers-Rich) and the friendship of the National Geographic Society, respectively. Also unlike Qantassaurus, Leaellynasaura is represented by a partial skull, as well as bones from below the skull.

Note the presence of a villainous raptorial claw entering the frame, about to victimize this poor, defenseless little dinosaur. Might be a good idea to duck into a burrow for safety, eh?

An ankylosaur is loose in the Australian Museum! What a waste! Oh, the humanity! The ankylosaur is Minmi, named in honor of creator spirits in indigenous cultures of northern Australia. Minmi is the most complete ankylosaur in Australia, and its skeleton was discovered in Early Cretaceous rocks of central Queensland, dating from about 95 million years ago.

As loyal readers know, I now have a little bit of experience with the Cretaceous rocks of Victoria after walking over a great amount of these (hmmm, some of those key words might be worked into the name for a blog some day). In contrast, I have much less experience with the Cretaceous of Queensland, which actually is far more extensive and produces vastly greater numbers of fossils than Victoria.

Now, I am not being disloyal to Victoria when I make such a statement: it’s just a fact, supported by the near-constant discovery and recovery of skeletons of large dinosaurs and marine reptiles. For example, last year the world learned about just how special Queensland dinosaurs were, when the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Centre unveiled three new species: two beautiful sauropods and one very nasty-looking theropod (and I mean “nasty” in a good, wholesome Janet-Jackson sort of way). Much, much more about those dinosaurs and the Centre will be discussed in a future entry.

But long before dinosaur bones were found in abundance in Queensland and new dinosaur species were described, people had found something even more important in central Queensland, and I say that with the fully biased opinion of an unrepentant ichnologist. That would be the Lark Quarry dinosaur tracksite, located about 110 kn (60 miles) south of Winton.

This tracksite is arguably one of the most important in the world (and yes, I will argue in favor of that designation, and yes, you will lose if you take up a contrary view). In a relatively small area on a single bedding plane are more than 3,000 dinosaur tracks preserved in natural relief. That in itself is remarkable, but the tracksite also records a few moments of dinosaurian behavior not interpreted from anywhere else in the world. More about that will be explored later, too.

So the following entries, based on our two weeks in Queensland, might be more aptly titled: The Great Cretaceous Drive, as not so much walking was done while we drove many kilometers in the outback. Fortunately for marital stability, there was a lot of paleontologically inspired art along the way too. So Ruth and I were able to combine our interests to each learn about why the Cretaceous of this part of Australia is also rich in stories that inspire our creative juices. So stay tuned for some juicy revelations, coming up soon!

The End of the Great Cretaceous Walk (Victoria Version)

(Field work along the Victoria coast ended last month, and now my wife – Ruth – and I are on holiday in Queensland, Australia. Strangely enough, we are still very much interacting with the Cretaceous in Queensland, so look for future entries dealing with that. The following is the last of the Victoria entries.)

The last day of field work in the Cretaceous of Victoria was on Wednesday, June 23, and it was mercifully laid-back and casual in comparison to our field experiences at Rotten Point and Dinosaur Cove the day before.

Mike Hall had left Apollo Bay the night before for home (which was in Melbourne), and Greg Denney was not joining us in the field, either. So it was just Tom Rich, my wife Ruth, and me going out on this fine day, one of the nicest weather-wise we had encountered during my month of field work in Victoria. Not surprisingly, we had some wild and wooly days during the course of a month: after all, it is winter there.

Our goals were to briefly scout two localities in the westernmost part of the Otway Ranges, which by happy coincidence were relatively close to The Twelve Apostles. This was Ruth’s third visit to this part of Victoria, yet she had not seen these natural wonders of Australia, the scenic centerpiece of the Great Ocean Road (albeit it was nowhere near the “center” of the drive, but more like the end of it if traveling from Melbourne). Tom insisted that Ruth would not miss The Twelve Apostles this time, a very gracious offer on his part, and justifiable for me as a geological-education stop. My students at Emory University can look forward to my showing them photos in their environmental geology class this upcoming September, whether they like it or not.

The Twelve Apostles, dwindling in number now but perhaps someday being joined by new seastacks through constant weathering and erosion. The ocean giveth, the ocean taketh away.

On the way to these seastacks, we first stopped at Moonlight Head, which was a bit difficult to pinpoint. In trying to find it, Tom had mistakenly conflated Moonlight Head with Wreck Beach, which led us to Moonlight Head, but it was not the same place he recalled, which we later found out was Wreck Beach. Wreck Beach he had visited only a few years ago, but he clearly remembered that 300+ steps were needed to reach the beach from the carpark. And of course, you had to climb back up those same steps if you wished to see the carpark again. (Life is full of choices, except when it’s not.)

Anyway, Moonlight Head was our first stop, and we parked the vehicle in a small space in front of a sign announcing that we were indeed at Moonlight Head.

Moonlight Head: The Sign. Note that the sign does not prohibit the use of wombats and explosives, a gross oversight by the park service, indeed.

We walked for only five minutes before stopping at a gorgeous overlook of the Victoria coast. Green coastal forest and scrub undulated downward to the sea, and far off in the distance were the tectonically tilted strata of the Otway Group, beseeching us to visit them and look for Cretaceous trace fossils.

Alas, its siren call fell on deaf ears, as our peals of laughter drowned it out. Our shared amusement was provoked by the thought of our walking for the next few hours downhill on a trail to such a faraway land – with no promise of trace fossils awaiting us there – then turning around and walking back up. Today was not the day for such athleticism or time consumption, especially with Wreck Bay and its 600+ steps happening later in the day. So with the GPS unit, I duly noted our position on the overlook, we took some photos, marveled at the scenery, and unceremoniously departed.

Wow, what fantastic Cretaceous outcrops! If only we felt like visiting them. Whoa, look at the time! Shouldn’t we be having a cuppa about now?

A little bit of backtracing in the vehicle brought us to a fork in the dirt road where we had originally taken a left, so now we took a right, which led to Wreck Beach. Fifteen minutes later, we arrived at a small carpark and got out to take a look. Yes, this was the place Tom had seen a few years before, and yes, the steps were there. A sign informed us of the precise number, which was 366, but for those people who like precision in their lives, more steps were required to walk from the vehicle to the start of the steps. Falsities abound when you live your life as an accountant.

Down we went, and quickly. Cretaceous sandstones and conglomerates were to my right and left, so I arbitrarily chose to go right. Cross-bedded sandstone was followed by more cross-bedded sandstone, which in turn was succeeded by cross-bedded sandstone. The lithological monotony was interrupted briefly by thin conglomerates, which were composed of broken bits of shale and fossil plant debris. After walking for about 20 minutes, no trace fossils made themselves apparent to me. All I saw was very nicely defined stratification, unsullied by burrows. A month of field work had led to my being able to discern which rocks were most likely to have trace fossils, and these were not those rocks. Ruth and Tom likewise saw no evidence of biological activity preserved in the rocks, either.

This space was left intentionally blank. That’s because I took no pictures of the rocks along Wreck Beach, out of protest at the lack of trace fossils there.

Soon we turned around, went back to the steps, and worked our way up, which took twice as long as going down, a result of that phenomenon known to some people as gravity (which is, after all, just a theory).

The way up from Wreck Beach, however many steps it might be.

Oh well – good exercise, fresh air, more rocks seen, and another locality in the Otway Ranges placed in the category of “There ain’t no trace fossils here.” And it was our last official stop in the Otways, and the last official stop of The Great Cretaceous Walk. After Wreck Beach, it was off to the Twelve Apostles (for which Ruth was grateful), and then to Melbourne for the night, before heading off to Sydney for a few days of rest, relaxation, and a big-city experience that was both interesting and jarring in its juxtaposition with our time along the Victoria coast.

But is this really the end? Not really, and I really mean that (for once). Following Sydney, Ruth and I made our way to Queensland for more vacation, but we passed through the Cretaceous of outback Queensland area, including a pilgrimage to Winton and the world-famous dinosaur tracksite, Lark Quarry, that is “only” 110 km (60 miles) south of town, as well as a visit to the very exciting Australian Age of Dinosaurs Centre just east of town. So keep tuned for a few more steps taken in The Great Cretaceous Walk in Australia. Will there be other years in Victoria, with more walking along Cretaceous outcrops? We shall see. In the meantime, on to New South Wales and Queensland!

Me, with my hand on the Tertiary Period and my feet in the Cretaceous Period at Dinosaur Cove, symbolizing how we oftentimes straddle great spans of time of which we cannot conceive nor comprehend. Also, I was trying really hard not to slip down the outcrop, and needed to hold onto something. Photo by Ruth Schowalter.