The Great Cretaceous Walk Takes a Rest

About six weeks ago, I shared the happy news of our discovering dinosaur tracks at Milanesia Beach, Victoria, which turned out to be the largest collection of polar dinosaur tracks known in the Southern Hemisphere. Those tracks were found during the month-long excursion (May-June 2010) along the Victoria coast that inspired the start of this blog. And although we found heaps more trace fossils, the tracks constituted out most important scientific find. So even though we have a but more science to do, this is as good of a time as any with this blog to say, “Catch you later” and make a transition both geographical and temporal.

The Great Cretaceous Walk has been very, very good to me. But it’s time to take a pause in all of the walking and talking about the Cretaceous of Australia, and look closer to home (Georgia) and at this time in the present (otherwise known as “now”). Photo by Tom Rich, and taken on May 28, 2011 (Day 2) of our month-long field survey of the Cretaceous trace fossils of Victoria.

Discovering the Dinosaur Tracks of Milanesia Beach

(In my previous entry, I described the start of a day in the field – June 14, 2010 – at Milanesia Beach, Victoria (Australia), just hours before Tom Rich, Greg Denney and I discovered the largest assemblage of polar dinosaur tracks in the Southern Hemisphere. In that entry, I also pointed out how few dinosaur tracks had been documented in Victoria before then, which also meant very few polar dinosaur tracks had been found in the Southern Hemisphere. This background gave some context on why this find is a big deal, paleontologically speaking. So, would you like to want to learn how these tracks were discovered? Then read on.)

As Tom Rich, Greg Denney, and I walked down Milanesia Beach the morning of June 14 2010, my thoughts were about the dearth of dinosaur tracks found thus far in Victoria, Australia. Geological research of these Cretaceous-age rocks had been going on for more than 100 years, and paleontological studies there had been particularly intense during the past 30 years. Yet during that time, only four definite dinosaur tracks had been discovered in all of the extensive Cretaceous outcrops of coastal Victoria. Moreover, all of these were individual prints, with no dinosaur trackways showing at least two sequential steps. The previous three weeks of field work Tom and I had done along the coast seemed to bear out this notion that dinosaur tracks were rare here, even scarcer than their bones.

Nonetheless, I also tried to shake a premonition, experienced only a half hour after arriving at Milanesia Beach, that we might find dinosaur tracks there. Rest assured, this hunch was not inspired by séances, Ouija boards, psychic-pet hotlines, or any other forms of necromancy. Instead, it was based on our seeing the physical sedimentary structures and small invertebrate trace fossils (burrows) that told me we were looking at the former deposits of river floodplains. These environments would have been perfect for preserving dinosaur tracks. Regardless, I reminded myself to just be a cold, clear-headed, objective scientist: you know, a pessimist.

 A few more of the dinosaur tracks of Milanesia Beach, Victoria (Australia). Three size categories were there: small, medium and large, all made by three-toed theropod dinosaurs. Greg Denney found the ones shown here, which he discovered by recognizing how this rock matched another one with dinosaur tracks that I had found just a few hours before. Please buy him an adult beverage next time you see him, slap him on the back, and say, “Good on ya, mate!”

Dreaming of Dinosaur Dreaming

Humans like to celebrate anniversaries during their lifetimes in fives and tens, which I like to think is a direct reflection of a much longer evolutionary heritage. For instance, why fives and tens, and not, say, threes or sevens? Look at your hands and feet, count your fingers and toes, and see what totals you get for each appendage (yakuza excluded). These numbers are a result of our having descended from synapsids (“mammal-like reptiles”) that likewise had five digits on each end of four limbs. In fact, all mammals are synapsids, and the last common ancestor synapsids shared with dinosaurs and other egg-laying reptiles was more than 300 million years ago. Humans and most other mammals don’t lay eggs (albeit, some placental mammals like to hatch from eggs), but a few still do – monotremes, such as platypuses and echindnas – thus demonstrating a lingering trait of this reptilian ancestry.

So it was this week that I was reminded of a five-year anniversary, the evolutionary history of mammals, and our long-lost connection to dinosaurs, thoughts that all coincided as they were triggered by remembering the Dinosaur Dreaming dig site in Victoria, Australia.

No, these people are not incarcerated and carrying out their sentences by cracking rocks all day in the summer sun. They actually are: volunteers at the annual Dinosaur Dreaming dig site in coastal Victoria, Australia; looking for fossils of Cretaceous dinosaurs, mammals, turtles, and other animals; and very much enjoy doing this. Really.

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.

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.

A Not-So-Rotten Day at Rotten Point: Part II

(In Part I of this two-part series, I related how our field party, while scouting the Victoria coast on June 22, was confronted with the horror of an inadequate outcrop, which necessitated drastic measures: hiking off-trail to reach a more substantial outcrop. Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen…)

It turned out that the bush-bashing needed to reach the main outcrop at Rotten Point was well worth the effort, although I will not pretend to speak for my field companions. Within only 10 minutes or so, I found many small, invertebrate trace fossils (mostly burrows) in the vertical cliff, and my ever-eager apprentice, Greg Denney, along with the keen-eyed Ruth, likewise spotted more. One of these trace fossils, however, was one I had not seen anywhere else in the Cretaceous of Victoria after nearly a month of field work. (Wish I could show it to you now, but we have that little thing in science called “peer review” that I like to respect.)

Avast! There be trace fossils in these Cretaceous rocks! Prepare to be described! Arrr! (Photo by Ruth Schowalter.)

So I stayed behind to document it and other trace fossils there – aided by my faithful field assistant, Ruth – while our three companions scouted ahead to the east, to Rotten Point proper, which was where the outcrop and its broken bits projected into the sea.

From about 200 meters (650 feet) away, Ruth and I watched Greg, Mike, and Tom sit down onto some rocks and reach into their packs for sandwiches. Ah yes, that hallowed tradition in field geology when one nearly forgets the passage of the morning, only to be reminded by your growling stomach: time for a field lunch! After performing some tricky moves over huge, slick boulders along the shore, we soon joined them, and then enjoyed a fantastic show of massive waves smash against the rocks just below us.

Let’s find a nice, quiet, peaceful place for a field lunch, shall we? Oh, this spot looks lovely! What, you think those waves are a little too close? Nonsense! Would you like a cuppa tea?

Ruth then snapped a photo of us looking prayerful at lunch, but I was actually explaining how burrowing bivalves move, and what sorts of trace fossils such behaviors might leave in the geologic record.

Showing reverence for trace fossils made by burrowing bivalves, a common practice in The Church of Ichnology. Notice also that Mike Hall (right) is living up to his nickname “Sandwich Hand,” which he earned while doing field work with me on the North Slope of Alaska in 2007. But that is another story. (Photo by Ruth Schowalter.)

So with sustenance and entertainment out of the way, we considered how to get out of our present location while also accessing more Cretaceous rocks just to the east of us. Why not just backtrack, retracing our steps taken to get down to that spot? Well, in a word, no. After the hard scrabble through coastal scrub and otherwise rough terrain to get where we were, no one suggested backtracking, even as a joke. This meant we would have to go around Rotten Point on the marine platform. Remember the huge waves mentioned previously? Those potential impediments did not magically diminish as soon as we made our decision, and would have to be taken into full consideration.

Timing and teamwork would be essential for achieving our goal. Although contrived TV shows in the U.S. often laud a romanticized ideal of “rugged individualism,” in most real situations the adoption of this attitude is hopelessly naïve and downright stupid. (I know, what a big shock that “reality” shows often have very little basis in the commodity they claim to reflect.) Nine times out of ten, you make it through such tough situations in the field through mateship: setting aside heroics and just watching out for your field companions by living attentively and unselfishly in the present.

The rock platform extended a thin lip of support over the ocean, with a slightly incised, v-shaped gap (one long step across) and about 10 meters (33 feet) of air in between the rock and ocean. One misstep, and it would be a quick descent to the water. Which would be fine if we were all outfitted with scuba gear, neoprene wetsuits, and dive masks. Instead, we were carrying field packs, wearing heavy boots, and a most of us had donned stylish hats (look for that picture at the end).

For added ballast, my pack contained a first-aid kit, water bottle, digital calipers, and an emergency blanket, the last of which would be great for keeping someone warm if they were pulled out of the ocean alive, which in this case was not likely to happen.

Backpacks filled with field gear make for poor flotation devices. I’m just saying… (Photo by Ruth Schowalter.)

I briefly thought about my digital camera in its small case and slung on a strap across my torso, and wondered if the memory card would still store and transfer photos of my newly found trace fossils after a good dunking, just in case someone else later found my kelp-wrapped camera without me. After all, science must go on, mishaps aside.

Someone had to go first. Greg did, as he had the greatest amount of experience at both getting safely across Victorian coastal outcrops and guiding people on such challenging terrain. So he easily went across the gap. For him, this really was a piece of cake, unlike other metaphorical confectionaries we had already been served earlier that day. Mike Hall, the oldest member of our party (72 years young), went next. His many years of geological field experience in Tasmania and other parts of the world meant this was no big deal to him either. So a few well-placed steps, along with a helping hand from Greg, placed him on the other side, too.

Now it was Ruth’s turn, and as she glanced down at the roiling ocean through the window provided by a lack of rock, she burst into laughter. “Is that nervous laughter I hear?” Greg asked her. “Yes!”, she responded immediately. (At the time, I did not know that Greg had also told her earlier about the 5-meter (16-foot) long great white sharks that prowl the waters just offshore, which likely would elicited a high-pitched giggle from me, too.) But having never done anything quite like this before, she did not know enough to be as petrified as the rocks around her, and went into decisive motion. With our encouragement and Greg and Mike lending a hand or two on the other side, she made it there quite handily, and waved to me from the other side, relief suffusing her face.

A nonverbal acknowledgement from Ruth of having just overcome a geologically and oceanographically posed challenge. And that’s Dinosaur Cove in the background. “Pretty cool” is the colloquial phrase that comes to mind.

Tom was the opposite of Ruth in experience on the Victoria coast, having done this sort of thing many, many times, so he crawled over on all fives, with his butt as his anchor. Again, Greg and Mike coaxed him over, and all was well; the relief he wore was more veiled, but still there.

I was last, and although I could have just jumped across, that would have been exceedingly idiotic, which I can be without much effort, but felt it wasn’t appropriate this time. Instead, I took slow, methodical, and tiny steps, angling my feet and body into the outcrop to my left to engage more friction. (Oh, how boring our lives would be without friction, for which we should give thanks every day.) Although the wet sandstone seemed free of slick algal films, I knew that appearances were not everything, and was taking nothing for chance. Ten seconds, and I was over, too. No worries, mate.

Amazingly, we were all now in Dinosaur Cove. Rotten Point marks the westernmost boundary of this small embayment named by Tom Rich back in 1980, which became the site for some of the most significant dinosaur discoveries not just in Victoria, but the rest of Australia. Nonetheless, we could not dwell on this fact for long, as we still had to make our way through house-sized boulders to the marine platform in the cove interior, the safest place in the cove.

The passage to safety in Dinosaur Cove through a “cave” made by two massive boulders. Note my field companions ahead of me, inspecting the outcrop for bones and trace fossils. Or are they just shadows on the wall of the “cave”?

Nearly everyone noticed small invertebrate trace fossils along the way and pointed them out to me, and I made sure to document these as well. The trace of a dig-site volunteer was also there, telling us about the presence of a “Fossil Rock.” I was informed by Tom Rich that this was the trace of Helen Wilson, and was probably rendered in the late 1980s. So if you’re reading this, Helen, good on you for leaving such a long-lasting trace!

A fossil is normally also a rock, but a rock is not always a fossil. Please discuss amongst yourselves, but not for too long.

Our way out was up from Dinosaur Cove was on a rock face on the well-worn route used by thousands of dig-site volunteers and visitors to Dinosaur Cove since the mid-1980s, then along an trail that was overgrown in places, clear in others. Just like our day in the field, and just like life, I guess. At the end of the trail was our field vehicle, and we all happily posed for pictures, grateful that our camaraderie had gotten one another through the rough spots, with a little bit of science coming out of it, too. Best of all, we had even kept our respective hats. It doesn’t get much better than that.

A happy end to a demanding day in the field, helped considerably by the forcefulness of the sign, which also prevented any accidental shootings. (Photo by Ruth Schowalter.)

A Not-So-Rotten Day at Rotten Point: Part I

Tuesday, June 22, was a day in the field that reminded us geologically oriented folks why we do this. Yes, it’s partly for the increased knowledge that may grow out of our daring to venture from behind our computer screens, travel long distances, and look at real rocks. But it’s also because of how it often leads to a satisfaction that comes with accepting what might come your way, as well as surpassing the mental and physical demands of field research. Yet to most people outside of geology and paleontology, our endeavors sometimes look like sheer madness. Oh well: their loss.

But before I relate some of the escapades of that memorable day, a brief review of the days immediately preceeding is needed to get readers up to date on the sequence of events. Field work resumed in the Otway Ranges (“Cretaceous West”) on Sunday, June 20, after a four-day break in Melbourne, during which my wife Ruth arrived from the U.S. This reentry to the field was a gentle one, though, as three of us (Tom Rich, Ruth, and me), during the drive back to Apollo Bay, were able to just pull up to a roadside parking lot, take a few steps down a boardwalk, and stroll across a flat marine platform near Skenes Creek, Victoria.

The “salad days” of field work in the Otways; Skenes Creek, with nothing but flat marine platform and a parking lot nearby. My wife Ruth, having arrived in Australia just the day before, is definitely enjoying this easy start, but has no inkling whatsoever of the next two days’ worth of field work, which let’s just say was almost the opposite of what you see here.

The main reason why we stopped at Skenes Creek is because the Cretaceous rocks here were rumored to hold dinosaur tracks. This idea started in the 1980s when a local resident spotted and photographed tracks there, then reported them in a letter sent to Tom, which even included a photograph of these important trace fossils. Ever since then, paleontological volunteers have come back looking for these tracks; alas, none have been spotted. This was my fourth time there, and I did no better than my predecessors, although I did note and photograph some probable invertebrate trace fossils while there. So back in the car, and it was a short drive to Apollo Bay, which was where we were staying.

The number in our field party increased to five on Monday, June 21, as geologist Michael (Mike) Hall (Monash University) and our local guide and local Greg Denney joined Tom, Ruth, and me. This was also the first day of the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, and Ruth, having just arrived from the oppressive heat and humidity of summertime in Atlanta, Georgia, was reveling in the kinder temperatures of a seasonal flip.

Tha day, we all went to an outcrop west of Dinosaur Cove with the intention of figuring out its stratigraphy – the order and distribution of the sedimentary rocks – and the original sedimentary environments – how the sediments composing the rocks were deposited more than 100 million years ago there, whether by river channels, deltas, floodplains, or lakes. By the end of that field day (some of which was rather strenuous), we felt that this goal was achieved, and we knew much more about the sedimentary situations that led to the formation and preservation of the trace fossils there.

Stratigraphy and sedimentary environments can be studied in lovely places, for sure, and the Otways Ranges have a wealth of them.

So what about June 22 and its challenges? It began with our goal, which was to scout a sizeable outcrop at a place I had never seen, the inauspiciously named Rotten Point. Rotten Point is located immediately west of Dinosaur Cove, and consists of dramatic coastal cliffs and marine platforms, which are continually shaped by powerful waves from southwesterly blowing winds. In planning for this reconnaissance, Greg told us this site should be easy to access. We examined a map together, which seemed to back up his claim. We could drive on a dirt road through his property to a small parking spot near Dinosaur Cove, park the vehicle, then hike a short trail to the outcrop that led from the track for the Great Ocean Walk. As we might say in the U.S., “Piece of cake.”

This “cake,” however, came out looking far different from its picture on the box, which looked all glossy and perfect, its icing tempting and sweet. Moreover, the instructions for mixing the ingredients and baking the cake must have been translated into Chinese, then back into English, and translated again into Esperanto with perhaps a smattering of Pig Latin. The “clear” trail had changed into an overgrown one that wound down a steep slope to the outcrop, a common occurrence in a place where plants tend to grow if unhampered by grazing animals or defoliating humans. This was not so bad in itself, but once we traversed it and reached the outcrop, we found ourselves standing on a relatively small bit of Cretaceous sandstone, penned in by broad gaps in the marine platform to the east and west. There simply was not much rock for us to see here, especially when compared to what was just east of us. Moreover, my ichno-vision detected no trace fossils here, a sad state of affairs, indeed.

Hey, looks like more Cretaceous rocks over there, perhaps with some trace fossils. What, you don’t want to swim across? Why not – where’s your sense of adventure?

So if we were to really examine this site, we would have to go back up and turn to the east, then hike over to a ridge to circumvent a broad chasm filled with foamy and churning seawater. Once there, we could drop down next to the cliffs and further down to the marine platform, enabling us to examine the much larger amount of rock offered to us by most of Rotten Point.

Back up the trail we went, and with Greg leading the way, we plunged into the dense coastal scrub.

Greg Denney, doing his Australian version of Houdini by disappearing in the coastal scrub: now you see him, now you don’t.

After all, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and there was no other way to reach the outcrop short of evolving gills or wings (and who has the time or genes for that?). Fortunately, very little of this coastal greenery is lethal, or even mildly disagreeable, for that matter. So this became more of an exercise in patience as we struggled our way through the thick vegetation to the ridge.

Once we reached the ridge, a quick slide down a sandy slope led to another patch of coastal scrub, then an abrupt descent into an amphitheater of Cretaceous rock. We had made it.

The cove just west of Rotten Point, which perhaps means it could be called Rotten Point Cove, but I will just call, Helluva-Trip-In Cove.

But was it worth the trip, geologically and paleontologically speaking? Tune in for A Not-So-Rotten Day at Rotten Point: Part II, in the next entry…