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New research published in PLoS ONE on Friday describes the remains of three new species of dinosaur: two giant herbivores (sauropods) and a carnivore (theropod) found during digs in the Winton Formation of central Queensland. They are the first large Australian dinosaurs to be discovered since 1981.

Below, several Australian experts in palaeontology respond to the paper. The fossils were unveiled today at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum by the Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh.

To read the paper go to: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0006190

Media releases from the Queensland Premier and PLoS One are available here.

Further information on each of the dinosaurs is also available on the Queensland Museum website.

IMAGES: Bone and dinosaur images can be downloaded via the above PLoS link or go to the www.australianageofdinosaurs.com website.

FOOTAGE: Broadcast quality footage taken during a recent visit to the dig site by scientists from La Trobe University is also available. For further info, contact us.

For comments made by the paper’s academic editor at PLoS, click here.

Feel free to use the quotes below in your stories. Any further comments will be posted here. If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 8207 7415 or by email.

Dr John Long is a palaeontologist and Head of Sciences at Museum Victoria.

“Wow! This is amazing stuff. I would regard the paper by Scott Hucknull and his team as one of the most significant papers ever published on Australian dinosaurs to date. It not only presents us with two new amazing long-necked giants of the ancient Australian continent, but also announces our first really big predator known from more than scrappy remains – Australovenator. This find also solves an old debate that has been raging since 1981 over Victoria’s ‘Allosaurus’ that is known from a single ankle bone, as it now appears to belong to Australoventor, which shows interesting links to the truly gargantuan group of Gondwana meat-eaters, the carcharodontosauroids.

This paper puts Australia back on the international map of big dinosaur discoveries for the first time since 1981 – when Muttaburrasaurus was announced.”

Associate Professor Rod Wells is from the School of Biological Sciences at Flinders University, SA. Rod is a vertebrate palaeontologist best known for discovering the Naracoorte Caves fossil deposit in SA. He’s an expert in fossil marsupials.

“Mention the word ‘fossil ‘and the immediate response is ‘dinosaur’. Children in particular love their dinosaurs, but when we think of dinosaurs we think North America, Europe, South America, Africa, not Australia. Australia is the exciting new frontier in vertebrate palaeontology, a continent as large as North America awaiting exploration. The dearth of mountain building events on this continent has meant we have no ‘Grand Canyons’ with exposed rock layers spilling fossils; finding fossils in Australia is difficult, time consuming and labour intensive, but the rewards can be outstanding.

Scott Hocknull from the Queensland Museum and his team of volunteers have shown what can be achieved by involving the community in the excitement of scientific discovery. They have opened a new window on the dinosaur fauna of a ~110 million year old portion of the world that remains largely unexplored, indeed a unique Australian fossil heritage. Their work is an exemplar of what can be achieved with limited resources, making an important contribution to basic science, to science education, as well as to the economy of the local community through the Age of Dinosaurs Museum. I applaud their efforts.”

Dr Ben Kear is a palaeontologist based at La Trobe University in Melbourne and an honorary research associate with the SA Museum.

“Australia is one of the great untapped resources in our current understanding of life from the Age of Dinosaurs. The discoveries of Hocknull and colleagues will definitely reinvigorate interest in the hitherto tantalizingly incomplete but globally significant record from this continent and pave the way for new studies on Australian dinosaurs and their environments.”

Dr Tom Rich is Senior Curator (Vertebrate Palaeontology and palaeobotany) at Museum Victoria.

“Where the Winton Formation is commonly exposed, there is a layer of black soil typically about one metre thick. Since at least the 1930s, fossil bones have been found on that surface. However, they were typically isolated bones and often badly broken. Digging in the black soil with hand tools is soul-destroying work. Sort of like digging in a solid mass of rubber. When people did that in the past, little if anything was found in that layer. After finally digging through the black soil and into the underlying sandy clays, the fossil bones found were often disappointing. What Hocknull, the Elliots, and their colleagues have done is to use bulldozers to follow surface traces of bone below the black soil over large areas and then do a lot of digging in the underlying sandy clays. That strategy involved a lot of hard work and expensive machine time. It did not pay off immediately. But it did pay off because they were persistent. They now have demonstrated the appropriateness of a technique that will no doubt reveal much more about the fossil tetrapods of the Winton Formation in the years to come than has been learned before. As the previous record of Australian dinosaurs is so meagre, this heralds a real advance in the years to come.

The three specimens reported by Hocknull and colleagues join less than a dozen others known from this continent from more than a single bone. The theropod is the first occurrence of that group known from anything more than an isolated element. The sauropods show a diversity of titanosaurs in Australia. This group is quite diversified in the Cretaceous of other continents, particularly South America. And it was to be expected that with further discoveries in Australia, this would be found to be the case here. Hocknull and colleagues have found the physical evidence demonstrating that this expectation was in fact correct.

Scott Hocknull was working very closely with David and Judy Elliott of the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum in Winton, Queensland. All three of them worked closely together for a number of years to bring off this result. In doing so, they attracted to their project a number of devoted persons who have been critical in their achieving together what they have accomplished.”

Aaron Camens is a PhD research student at the SA Museum and the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide. His main research focus is on fossil marsupials.

“Hocknull and colleagues’ discovery is a fantastic new addition to Australia’s Cretaceous dinosaur record. It also opens a new window into our understanding of dinosaur evolution in the Southern Hemisphere. The Winton Formation is the centre of dinosaurian palaeontology in Australia and Hocknull is right in the thick of it. SA has a grand total of three dinosaur bones, I’m packing my bags for Queensland!”

Scott Hocknull, lead author of the PLos One paper from the Queensland Museum comments on the new carnivorous therapod, nicknamed ‘Banjo’.

“The cheetah of his time, Banjo was light and agile. He could run down most prey with ease over open ground. His most distinguishing feature was three large slashing claws on each hand. Unlike some theropods that have small arms (think T. rex), Banjo was different; his arms were a primary weapon. He’s Australia’s answer to Velociraptor, but many times bigger and more terrifying.

Many hundreds more fossils from this dig await preparation and there is much more material left to excavate.”

The sixty skeletons were found buried next to ornate ceramic pots, some in carefully laid out south-facing graves, and in one case three heads had been laid on the dead person’s chest.

The research team, including several Australians, has been working on the site since its discovery in 2003. Their findings will be published today in the journal American Antiquity.
The scientists, from Durham, UK, Otago, NZ and the Australian National University, have analysed the strontium, carbon and oxygen isotope signatures of the teeth of many of the skeletons to get vital information about their geological origin, their diet and likely source of their drinking water.

The results from the team’s analysis strongly suggest that some had migrated from distant coastal locations, potentially as far away as Southeast Asia.

Members of the research team comment below.

Feel free to use these comments in your stories. If you would like to speak to an expert, don’t hesitate to contact us on 08 8207 7415 or by email. Click here for a copy of the press release from Durham University (media contact: Dionne Hamil, email , tel +44 (0) 191 334 6075).

The views expressed below are the personal opinions of the experts named here. They do not represent the views of the AusSMC or any other organisation unless specifically stated.

Dr Stuart Bedford, from the Department of Archaeology and Natural History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, at the ANU was part of the research team

“It’s a tremendously exciting one-off find after 50 years of research. The cemetery itself is the earliest cemetery found in the Pacific. We’ve excavated about 50% of it and recovered 60 individual well-preserved skeletons, approximately 3000 years old (125 generations).

This is the first really decent sample of this early migratory group – the Lapita people – who were the first to move beyond the main Solomons group and initially colonise across to Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. It has been more than 40 years since the Lapita was identified as an archaeological horizon that spanned the Melanesian-Polynesian divide. It is generally associated with very intricately decorated ceramics and other items of material culture and with the introduction of domesticates such as the pig and chicken. But over 4 decades of research have produced very few skeletons, and this is the first time we’ve been able to profile this pioneering population, what they looked like, the state of their health, their diet and also we are able to get some idea of their mortuary practices which appears to be quite complicated and continuing on over a period of a year or more.

The decorated pots are being found in direct association with the burials. We have found a whole series of pots placed next door to skeletons; in one case we have a skull inside a pot and another there are three skulls placed on the chest of one individual.

The results from the isotope work also indicate that of 15 tested at least 4 have come from another island confirming aspects of theories people have had about these colonising populations”.

Dr Alex Bentley, from the Department of Anthropology at Durham University, led the team.

“The combination of the way these people were buried and the information we have about their possible origin reveals a richness of social complexity. Although they travelled long distances by sea, they nonetheless were farmers as much as they were fisher folk.

“The curious burials among the identified group of prehistoric Pacific mariners, who were among the best navigators on earth for the next 3,000 years, indicate they were admired by the locals for their amazing long-distance travelling abilities.”

Early humans were living more complex and interesting lives than previously thought, according to a report to be published in this week’s Nature magazine. A team of researchers have found evidence in a South African sea cave that humans were adapting to a coastal diet and painting their bodies with ochre as far back as 164,000 years ago. The earliest previous evidence of such activities was dated to around 125,000 years ago. The two Australian members of the research team were available to journalists at an online briefing today.

BRIEFING DETAILS:

WHEN: Thursday 18 October 2007
TIME: 10.30am-11:00am AEST
Venue: Online

SPEAKER:

Dr Zenobia Jacobs, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong

Dr Andy Herries, Human Origins Group, School of Medical Sciences, University of NSW

PRESENTATIONS:

Zenobia Jacobs’ Presentation:
View Bio (pdf) | View PowerPoint (pdf)

Andy Herries’ Presentation:
View Bio & Abstract (pdf) | View PowerPoint (pdf)

Please contact us if you would like to see the video file of the online briefing.

For further information contact the Australian Science Media Centre on 08 8207 7415 or email us.

In a report published in Nature on Thursday, researchers describe ancient diamonds found in the Jack Hills region of Western Australia that are over four billion years old, relatively close to the time when the earth was first formed. They are the oldest identified fragments of the Earth’s crust and are unique in preserving information on the earliest evolution of the Earth. Such ancient crystals indicate that the Earth may have cooled much earlier than previously thought.

The paper’s authors include Alexander Nemchin, Robert Pidgeon and Simon Wilde from Western Australia’s Curtin University of Technology plus Martina Menneken and Thorsten Geisler from Germany’s Institut für Mineralogie.

Several experts (including one co-author) comment on the report below. Copies of the paper are available upon request.

Click here for an aerial view of Jack Hills, the location in Western Australia where the diamonds were found.

For further enquiries or for details of other experts available to comment, contact the AusSMC on 08 8207 7415 or email us.

Dr Alexander Nemchin, co-author and senior lecturer in isotope geochemisty at the Department of Applied Geology, Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia

“These zircons were discovered 20 years ago and we’ve been extracting information ever since. These latest findings indicate that the planet was already cooling and forming a crust much earlier than previously thought.

Jack Hills is the only place on earth that can give us this kind of information about the formation of the earth. We’re dealing with the oldest material on the planet.”

Dr Martin Van Kranendonk is a senior geologist with the Geological Survey of Western Australia

“Any information about the very early Earth is fantastic, it’s like a Christmas present for geoscientists. This work provides a new constraint for geoscientists to consider how the Earth formed into the planet it is today. It’s another piece in the early Earth puzzle.”

Professor Malcolm Walter is the Director of the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University, NSW.

“It was thought until recently that nearly all knowledge about the history of the Earth from about 4 billion years ago back to its origin at 4.65 billion could only come from inference and models. The oldest rocks are 4.03 billion years old. Then came the discovery of zircon (zirconium silicate) crystals as old as 4.4 billion years old in Western Australia. The detailed chemistry of these crystals revealed an amazing array of information about processes on the early Earth. Now these interpretations have been challenged and extended by the discovery of minute diamonds within some of the zircon crystals.

Contrary to many interpretations, it now seems possible that Earth already had a thick crust as early as 4.25 billion years ago. Not only does this have major implications for the early history of Earth, but it also suggests that life could have originated hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought.”

Below, Australian DNA experts respond to the paper’s findings. Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. For further information or to contact an expert, phone the AusSMC on 08 8207 7415 or email us.

Professor Alan Cooper is Director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide

“This is good solid work because it demonstrates that the Australian human genetic diversity falls within the initial dispersal out of Africa, some 70-130,000 years ago. In other words, other hominid groups already in this area, such as Homo erectus (eg Java man) or the Flores hobbits, did not contribute any genetic material as the humans moved through sometime before 50,000 years ago.

This is in contrast to the largely discredited, but still vociferous, advocates of a multi-regional evolution of humans, where archaic hominids develop into modern human groups in parallel all around the world.

The work also suggests a relatively quick movement of early human groups around the Indian Ocean Rim, and relative isolation of New Guinea and Australian populations from initial colonisation some 50,000 years ago, up until colonial times. The paper also identifies the important work still to be done in identifying how the various Aboriginal language and cultural groups evolved within Australia after that point.”

Professor Colin Groves from the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University.

“This paper is significant because it affirms that there was no demonstable input from Homo erectus or any other non-sapiens source and confirms Australian aborigines’ closest links as being with New Guinea. It also puts a date range on human colonisation as being 58,4000 years +/- 8,400 years before the present and shows that Australia (with New Guinea) was essentially isolated, genetically and culturally, from then until colonial times.”