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For nearly 100 million , a gargantuan creature – perhaps the largest ever to walk on Australian soil – has lain concealed in central Queensland, as if in hibernation. Now a sheep farmer has woken it up.

BY STEVEN SALISBURY

LOOKED AROUND DESPERATELY for something the right size. I needed something big, but the tallest tree I’d seen all day was a Istraggly wattle we’d nearly run over with the four-wheel drive. Quickly, I counted the rungs on a nearby wind- mill. There were six, spaced about a metre-and-a-half apart, making the windmill’s total height about 10 m. That meant the shed next to it must be about 20 m long. It’d have to do. Turning to the other palaeontolo- gists and colleagues from the Queens- land Museum, I said: “From the pieces we’ve got, I’d say he was about 4 m high at the hips. That’s just under half the height of the windmill.” I paused and looked towards the shed. “It’s hard to know how long his tail and neck were, but I reckon there’s a good chance he would’ve stretched the length of the shed.” I thought about what I’d just said and tried to visualise an that size. This was a big one – a really big one. A prehistoric, ground-shaking road train that thundered through the ancient outback. I smiled to myself. No of this size had ever before been found in .

Two gigantic sauropods forage along the banks of a billabong. Coelurosaurs scurry around the sauropods’ thumping feet, catching insects attracted to huge piles of dung, while on the opposite bank, a few MUTTABURRASAURUS pause to drink, watched by basking crocs. Bones of Australia’s largest sauropod were recently discovered near ILLUSTRATION: LAURIE BEIRNE Winton in central Queensland.

100 A USTRALIAN G EOGRAPHIC J ANUARY – M ARCH 2002 101 Dinosaur Dreamtime of tree ferns, pine cones, pieces of pet- rified wood, and leaves from some of RAW THREE LONG, straight lines the first flowering plants. D in outback Queensland from This ancient landscape was also Chillagoe in the north to Boulia in home to a diverse range of . the west, then to Roma in the south These are known mainly from fos- and back to Chillagoe. This vast reg- silised tracks, the best examples of ion is what I call the Dinosaur Trian- which are at Lark Quarry (Corroboree, gle – the area in which nearly all of AG 56), about 95 kilometres south- Queensland’s dinosaur fossils have west of the town. There, footprints of been found. a large carnivorous Allosaurus-like Slap bang in the middle of this tri- dinosaur run amok among those of angle, more than 15 hours drive from chook-sized creatures called coeluro- Brisbane, lies Winton and the nearby saurs, and slightly larger plant-eaters sheep station where the latest dino- called ornithopods. A fourth set of saur remains were discovered. prints may belong to one of Australia’s The station is set in a seemingly best-known dinosaurs, the 7 m long endless expanse of semi-arid grass- Muttaburrasaurus. land, with gently rolling downs of dro- Nearly all of the Dinosaur Triangle ught-resistant Mitchell grasses. Few is set on a thick sedimentary layer trees grow in the dense clay soils of known as the Winton Formation. Up the downs, but occasionally the grassy to 400 m thick in some places, this plains give way to hardy scrub and for- vast rock unit has produced the rem- est communities of gidgee, boree, lan- ains of at least 12 dinosaurs. cewood and coolibah. Most of the dinosaur bones found One of the world’s only recorded dinosaur It was much different 98–95 mil- in the area are remnants of enormous STEVE SALISBURY stampedes is set in stone at Lark Quarry lion years ago. Back then – in the mid- plant-eaters called sauropods. Sauro- Conservation Park, 95 km south-west dle of what we call the pods were a group of gigantic four- of Winton. There, about 170 two-legged Period – this was part of a great river legged plant-eaters characterised by Experts in their field. Crawling on hands coelurosaurs and ornithopods, most the plain, with sandy channels, swamps long necks and tails, legs thick as , both of which are thought clearly visible among the long strands and knees, palaeontologists scour the size of turkeys, had gathered by a lake. and lakes brimming with freshwater Greek pillars and disproportionately to have exceeded 30 m in length and of dry yellow grass. ground for small, exposed fragments of They were frightened into a stampede mussels, lungfish and crocodiles. small heads. weighed as much as 90 tonnes. A later, the farmer returned to the recently discovered giant sauropod by a hungry, ALLOSAURUS-sized theropod. Open, lowland forests covered much When I was a kid, I used to love Unlike other continents, Australia the spot to collect the bones. “We had named Elliot. The bones were scattered Its 60 cm long footprints show where of the land, as revealed by numerous dreaming about enormous sauropods has few remains of sauropods, and a great time with the kids trying to over an area the size of seven rugby fields, it pounded through the ancient mudflat plant fossils found throughout the such as – now known dinosaurs in general. In part, this is put some of the bigger pieces back presumably dispersed by the currents of before disappearing in the direction area, including the trunks and fronds as – and Bra- the result of there being few exposed together,” he said. “Once we’d done as the river or lake in which the giant died. of the startled mob. chiosaurus. The sauropod group rocks of the right age in this country. much as we could we decided to call includes the largest to have To a greater degree however, it ref- you fellas.” walked the earth: few other dinosa- lects the simple fact that, in contrast Dr Mary Wade, an Honorary Asso- HOW CAN YOU TELL? urs were larger than even the small- to countries like the USA, we simply ciate of the Queensland Museum, then est sauropods, which were nearly 1.5 don’t have as many people scouring did a preliminary examination of the Dinosaur bones in the Winton times the size of an African elephant. our vast land for dinosaur remains, bones and suggested they might Formation sometimes appear similar We’ve known for more than a dec- which are difficult to find at the best belong to a sauropod. That was all we to the sun-bleached bones of ade that Australia was home to sau- of times. needed to hear. present-day animals, so how do ropods as massive as Elliot, but we When we arrived at the homestead, palaeontologists recognise them in just haven’t had the bones to prove the bones had been neatly arranged the field? Some of the more distinctive it. Between 1987 and 1993, enormous Our biggest yet for us on a table. I’ll never forget the bones can be quickly identified by their sauropod footprints were found on synchronised dropping of jaws when size or shape but, at first glance, smaller the wave-washed rock platforms HE BONES our team had come to we walked into the room. Most dino- pieces can be hard to distinguish from around Broome, Western Australia. examine were first spotted by saur finds in Australia usually begin – T bits of more recent skeletons. One The sandstone in which these foot- a farmer while he was mustering and often end – with tiny, isolated major clue is their weight – over aeons prints occur is only slightly older than sheep in October 1999. “I was in the fragments of bone, scoffed at by over- underground, the internal cavities of the Winton Formation. foulest mood when I found the seas palaeontologists. But here were a dead animal’s bones may become Most of the Broome footprints are things,” he told us over a few tinnies. literally hundreds of pieces of dino- impregnated with minerals, making 45–90 centimetres wide, but at least “I was wheeling a big mob at the time. saur skeleton, including part of the them become much heavier. A dinosaur one set of tracks belong to an animal The bastards were all over the place femur (the thighbone), several verte- bone of a similar size to one from a with feet an incredible 1.5 m long. and had just split in two. All of a sud- brae and portions of ribs. I knew at recently dead animal, such as a cow, Footprints this size can only have been den I spotted something out of the once that they belonged to a sauropod would weigh almost twice as much as produced by a truly gigantic animal, corner of my eye that looked like a – they were absolutely massive. The the newer bone. whose size may well have surpassed dinosaur bone.” Jutting from the piece of femur alone was the size COURTESY OF TOURISM QUEENSLAND even the mighty and parched soil, its stark whiteness was of a medium-sized television, about

102 A USTRALIAN G EOGRAPHIC J ANUARY – M ARCH 2002 103 60 cm high and 50 cm wide. It took “My instincts two of us to carry it outside. Although it was far too early to tell me there’s determine if the sauropod was new Dinosaur Cape Triangle to science, we decided straight away much more of York that it should at least have a familiar AUSTRALIA Peninsula name as well as its obligatory mus- Elliot still in Gulf of G r eum specimen number: QM F43302. e

a Carpentaria t We left the decision to the station the ground.” manager, and his choice immediately brought a smile to all our faces: Elliot, Cairns after a family member. Chillagoe Determining how large Elliot was, Coral Sea Normanton D and even his species, will be a long femur in the Queensland Museum

i Einasleigh v i investigative process. All the sauro- collection is no larger than 1.4 m.

d

i Pacific n pod fossils previously found in the area Most sauropods have femur leng- Townsville g are thought to belong to a type of din- ths of 1.3–1.5 m and I could find only nd mo Charters ich Towers osaur named , the first a couple of animals with longer legs R Julia Creek n Mount Isa elto Hughenden Ocean specimen of which was discovered in than Elliot, among them Brachio- axw M Mackay the late 1920s. Austrosaurus had saurus, the largest specimens of which robust front legs and the first bones have femurs just over 2 m long. Winton Muttaburra found were estimated to have come Once I’d worked out the length of Boulia Lark Quarry from a creature about 15 m long. The Elliot’s femur I was able to speculate Con. Park Longreach Rockhampton TROPIC OF CAPRICORN R bones of Elliot collected so far indi- on his overall length and weight. a Isisford n g cate that he was very similar to Aus- Sauropods show great variation in the e Q U E E N S L A N D trosaurus, if not the same species. length of their neck and tail, with The large chunk of femur provided some of the longest getting most of Birdsville Durhum Downs the best gauge for estimating Elliot’s their length from an enormous tail. Charleville STEVE WILSON Roma size. Using proportions from other For example, Diplodocus’s graceful Sauropod Fossil Finds sauropod skeletons, I calculated that tail accounts for almost 45 per cent of Dinosaur Triangle BRISBANE ✪ his femur must have been 1.5–1.7 m the creature’s total length of 23–27 m. Back in the lab, Joanne Wilkinson carefully Cunnamulla 0 200 km long. This is substantially bigger than On the other hand, had There’s an extremely good chance that tends to the piece of Elliot’s femur. As senior any other found in Australia – the a relatively short tail, but its giraffe- many more bones, including some of fossil preparator at the Queensland Museum, largest reconstructed Austrosaurus like neck accounted for almost 10 m the smaller, more fragile parts of the Joanne first cleans the bone in water and of its total length of 22.5 m. skeleton, such as the skull, await dis- allows it to dry. She then applies soluble Judging by the similarities in body covery below the surface. plastic diluted with acetone. The porous PIECES OF THE PUZZLE proportions to those of titanosaurs, a As with most of the Winton dis- bone absorbs the plastic and, after several group of Gondwanan sauropods, it’s a trict, the bedrock in which Elliot was applications, gradually hardens. Pieces pretty safe bet that Elliot was 16–21 m fossilised is covered by 1–2 m of heavy of bone that have broken off are affixed long. Although not as long as some of clay soil. As this soil expands and with an epoxy-resin glue, to complete the the so-called “super giants”, Elliot had contracts in response to periods of wet conservation of this most important find. a build that would have given him a and dry, it slowly moves nodules mass of at least 30 tonnes. of bedrock containing bones. Some of that could take many years. these appear on the surface, but most When I was a young dino-freak remain moving around in the soil and, growing up in the Blue Mountains, Finishing the job without excavation, would probably New South Wales, nearly all the never see the light of day. dinosaur names I memorised belon- Y INSTINCTS tell me there’s Over the next year or so, our team ged to animals from other countries. M much more of Elliot still in the – with the support of the Australian Thankfully, as the years went by, I ground – at least three times as many Geographic Society – will return to was able to add a few Australian ones AREA ENLARGED pieces as we’ve already found. Given the site armed with acoustic and seis- to that list – Muttaburrasaurus, his enormous size, it seems highly mic instruments to see if we can Minmi, Leaellynasaura and Atlas- unlikely that the pieces we so far have locate the parts of Elliot’s skeleton copcosaurus. When my dad asked me ILLUSTRATION: LAURIE BEIRNE STEVE SALISBURY are all that remain. His massive bones that are still buried. Unfortunately, which were the biggest I’d always find would not easily have been moved or the clay is so dense that it may render myself telling him about dinosaurs Although only a fraction of Elliot’s skeleton has been recovered (bones marked in Almost 50 cm across, this portion of the eaten by scavengers – even a large car- our instruments ineffective. Even so, from overseas. Although I knew about black), there are enough pieces to give us an idea of his size and shape. Some aspects of femur forms the upper part of the knee nivorous dinosaur like Allosaurus. we hope to be able to start a full-scale Austrosaurus, it never seemed to qual- Elliot’s skeleton indicate he was similar to a sauropod known as a titanosaur. Based on a joint. With a total length of 1.5–1.7 m, Our team found fragments spread excavation of the site sometime in ify as a dinosaurian heavyweight. titanosaur skeleton, Elliot’s total length would have been 16–21 m. At this size he would the complete femur (inset, above left) out over an area the size of seven 2002. All Elliot’s bones will then need Those days are over. After 95 mill- have been almost 4 m high at the hips and weighed as much as five African elephants. would’ve been as tall as a family fridge. rugby fields, but all the bones so to be painstakingly conserved and ion years asleep, Australia’s Dream- far collected come from the surface. documented in the laboratory, a task time giant has finally awoken.

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