Rob Ievers and his brother Ian were mustering cattle on Marathon station, a 22,662 ha cattle

and sheep run between Richmond and Hughenden, when they found a 15cm long piece of
fossil wood. After scratching the crumbly, dry shale soil from around it, they could see more
teeth disappearing back into the bank. They called in the Queensland Museum and a team led
by Dr Mary Wade was assembled and on site within a week. After three days, an almost
complete pliosaur was pulled from its 100-million-year-old grave. It turned out to be the best
specimen so far found of Minmi, a 2.5m armoured dinosaur unique to Australia. Rob was so
impressed by what he found on his property that he set up a fossil museum in Richmond to give
the pliosaur and Minmi a home. The Richmond Marine Fossil Museum, part of the Kronosaurus
Korner complex, opened in 1995 and has opened the eyes of local landowners to what could be
found in their soils. However, fossils are technically the property of the State and a licence is
needed to collect them, so some landholders donate fossils anonymously.
Dave Elliott, a grazier in Winton, has found a thighbone of Elliot, Australia's biggest dinosaur,
which has taken over his life. He is organising digs and planning the permanent Australian Age
of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History, which will open in Winton in the next few years. On
days when he is working Belmont, he invariably finds more fossil sites, such as an arm bone of
something as big as Elliot. The Queensland Museum runs organised expeditions to continue
searching for more material on Belmont, and so far several ute-loads of fossils have been
transported back to the museum in Brisbane.
Queensland is Australia's premier dinosaur graveyard, with two-thirds of the State covered by
Cretaceous rock dating back to between 90 and 130 million years ago. During the 'Age of the
Dinosaurs', the whole continent of Australia was sucked down by tectonic activity and water
poured in from the north, flooding much of western Queensland and parts of the NT, SA and
NSW. This shallow inland sea provided a home for fish, turtles and marine reptiles, and the floor
of this ancient sea was carpeted with their remains. As Australia drifted north, massive river
systems to the south spewed immense quantities of sand and silt into the dwindling inland sea,
forming extensive delta systems that preserved the remains of both estuarine and riverine
animals such as crocodiles, marine reptiles and a wide variety of fish. Dinosaur footprints also
became fossilised, such as those at Lark Quarry, 95km south-west of Winton.
Kylie Piper is a self-confessed dinosaur nerd who has been to the Elliot dig three times, in 2002,
2003 and 2004. She has a dinosaur fetish and chases dinosaurs in her spare time, leading to
her job as a science communicator at the Australian Museum. She staked out a small area of a
few metres and called it Kylie's Corner, determined to find something. After many days of
digging, she found a vertebra from a long-necked dinosaur, one of the largest examples found
anywhere in Australia.

Jo Wilkinson is a senior technical officer with the Queensland Museum who has spent up to two
months preparing a single piece of bone. She is fascinated by taphonomy, the science of trying
to work out what happened to the animal before and after death, including processes such as
weathering, transportation and scattering. She has bonded with a specimen after a while, and
her recently released book Digging up deep time is a road trip through the evolution of life in
Australia.
Thomas , A., & Willis, P. (2009, June 1). Dinosaur discoveries: The dinosaur
musterers. Australian Geographic. Retrieved March 9, 2023, from
https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/
2009/06/dinosaur-discoveries-the-dinosaur-musterers/