Dinosaur Cove
Dinosaur Cove in Victoria, Australia is a major fossil bearing site in south-east of the continent where the Otway Ranges meet the sea to the west of Cape Otway, adjacent to Great Otway National Park (map). The inaccessible ocean-front cliffs include fossil-bearing strata that date back to about 106 million years ago (MYA).
During the Early Cretaceous the location was a flood plain within a great river valley that formed as Australia started to separate northward from Antarctica. Sand, mud and silt deposits covered and sometimes preserved the remains of dead animals and plants. As the rift valley sank, the deposits were buried by up to three kilometres of sediment, which turned to rock under pressure. In the last 30 million years the sediments have been uplifted to form the Otway and Strzeleki ranges, bringing them near the surface again.
In a geologically similar location in Victoria, the first dinosaur fossil ever discovered in Australia was uncovered in 1903, when the geologist William Hamilton Ferguson was mapping the rocky coastal outcrops.
The exploration of the Dinosaur Cove site was helped tremendously by the tireless efforts of Thomas H. Rich and Patricia Rich. The dinosaurs, Leaellynasaura amicagraphica and Timimus hermani, are even named after their children Tim and Leaellyn.
Heavy mining equipment and dynamite was needed to blast away overlying strata to uncover the fossiliferous rock layers in the cliff face.
In the 1980s and 90s Dinosaur Cove yielded such hypsilophodontids as Leaellynasaura amicagraphica and Atlascopcosaurus loadsi, and a Coelurosaur, as well as fragments of what may be a caenagnathid (relatives of the Oviraptors). These Australian species, the "polar dinosaurs of Australia", apparently had keen night vision and might have been warm-blooded, letting them forage for food during long polar winter nights at low temperatures, which were much milder than today's temperatures within the Antarctic Circle.
Related
- Dinosaur Dreaming
- List of fossil sites (with link directory)
Dinosaur cove is located in Australia in Southern Victoria. It’s one of the major fossil sites in Australia. It’s located near the Otway ranges meeting the sea. Fossils of the Leaellynasaura, Qantassaurus, Timimus, and Atlascopcosaurus have been discovered at Dinosaur cove. Dinosaur cove still has rocks and layers of sand dated back to around 106 million years ago. One fossil found in Dinosaur Cove was the Cape Patterson Claw. The fossil was discovered in 1903 and was one of the first to be found. William Ferguson was the name of the man who discovered the fossil of a dinosaur’s claw. Shortly after more researchers and geologists scoped the area for fossils and found over 700 fossil bones and teeth. The fossils were as old as 120-115 million years, they were there from the Early Cretaceous period.