Aussie dinosaur dig reported in Sydney Morning Herald, 13 Aug 2010. A team of amateur and professional dinosaur diggers are hoping to find even more dinosaur bones in a western Queensland site where two Australian dinosaurs were found four years ago. The dinosaurs were named Australovenator and Diamantinasaurus. Thought to be similar to Velociraptor, Australovenator has three large claws on each hand, and Diamantinasaurus is described as a giant plant-eating dinosaur. The digging project is being conducted by the Queensland Museum, but recruits members from the general public to help. Palaeontologist Scott Hocknull commented: “You don’t have to be a scientific boffin to go on these digs. We’re bringing in people who have never seen, dug or handled a dinosaur bone in their life and training them to be modern palaeontologists in a matter of weeks.” He went on to explain that western Queensland has many dinosaur fossils because it was once covered by an inland sea. He commented: “If you threw a dart at a map of western Queensland, I could find you a dinosaur site. A hundred million years ago (central Queensland) was on a massive flood plain bigger than the Amazon … depositing hundreds of metres of sediment. So the bones of these animals accumulated in the flood debris. It’s very flat country but what’s happened over the last 100 million years is … it has slowly been eroded away.”
Editorial Comment: Since we are talking about a distance of several thousand kilometres here, it takes more than just the presence of an inland sea to deposit hundreds of metres thick of sediment containing bones of giant dinosaurs. When you add the rarely mentioned facts that the land dwelling dinos are found mixed with fossil sea shells and huge petrified trees you have to admit it took massive, catastrophic flood deposition to do it. Of course Noah’s flood is not yet acceptable, but small ‘f’ flood debris is at least being conceded. Taking people across this huge Aussie outback fossil field was the aim of our recent bus adventure – just so they could gain a perspective on how enormous it is and they could see the evidence of massive rapidly deposited sediments for themselves. (Ref. fossilisation, catastrophe, reptiles)
Evidence News 25 Aug 2010