Dinosaur Dreaming 2000: Flat Rocks Site Report

[Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>]

Wednesday night was the annual "Friends of Dinosaur Dreaming" night down
here in south eastern Australia, which included a snazzy new site report
from the Flat Rocks site with a glossy colour cover of Qantassaurus
painted by Peter Trusler.

Another season, another thousand bones... of which about 100 have been
prepared so far. This year saw lots of non-tooth-bearing
hypsilophodontid skull material, as well as a lovely little ilium about
5cm long. Skull bones included a jugal, premaxilla, predentary,
?parietals, ?braincase and ?preorbital. The predentary proves that these
hypsies had a beak at least on the lower jaw. However the premaxilla
seems to indicate tooth sockets right to the front of the upper jaw,
perhaps suggesting that only the lower jaw had a keratinous beak. This
sort of reminds me of sheep, although they have the opposite condition
(incisors in the lower jaw, none in the top).

Jordan Mallon recently asked whether all bird and dinosaur beaks match -
this evidence may suggest that they didn't always. Of course given the
variety of hypsie species in Early Cretaceous southern Australia, some
may have been beaked while others weren't, with the two specimens coming
from very different species. As usual numerous hyspie limbs bones in
various states of preservation were also recovered.

Dr Tom Rich gave a brilliant lecture on the mammal remains from the
site, which now number a dozen individual fossils. Three more
Ausktribosphenos jaws were found in 2000, as well as a new jaw that
indicates a new genus and species of Ausktribosphenid (hopefully to be
published soon in Nature by Tom Rich). Another Teinolophos jaw was found
as well, although lacking teeth. Speaking of which, a bit of further
preparation has seen the death of Teinolophos the Eupantothere. Say
hello instead to Teinolophos the tiny monotreme. The single tooth in the
type specimen is extremely similar to those of Steropodon galmani,
although this new specimen is only about 22% of the size. Dr Rich had
always thought that there were size constraints on how small monotremes
could get, especially in a polar environment. But here we seem to have a
monotreme only a few centimetres long. Just imagine the size of the eggs
it might have layed!

Teeth galore were found: about 30 hyspie teeth, 10 from theropods (with
serrations only along the posterior edge), 2 ankylosaur teeth, and 3 of
what may be from pterosaurs. The ever present dermal ossicles were...
well, ever present as usual.

A new site has been found at Eagles Nest, which may well actually be an
old site. It was found while trying to locate the site where the first
Australian dinosaur bone was found, the "Cape Patterson claw" that was
described by William Ferguson in 1906. The new site, dubbed the Ferguson
Site, yielded 24 bones during two days, including a partial bird humerus
that indicates a decent sized animal. There are plans for more one day
trips to the site in 2001, although it is not as easy to get to as Flat
Rocks.

That's about it. In all it was a productive year, and with only 10% of
the material prepared. Who knows what treasures are still stuck inside
the annoyingly hard sandstone blocks brought back.

-- 
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Dann Pigdon                   Australian Dinosaurs:
GIS Archaeologist           http://dannsdinosaurs.terrashare.com
Melbourne, Australia        http://www.alphalink.com.au/~dannj/
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