27/7/22 Australian Age of Dinosaurs

 

    Can we get better than yesterday , well Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum may be interesting . We were greeted by this Theropod just out the front of the reception area .

    This is the view across to the March of the Titanosaurs Exhibition - about 2klms away .

  First up though , you go to the Fossil Preparation Laboratory where there's a guided walk through the lab . There are racks of fossils on pallets waiting to be cleaned & examined .

    Here's 3 femur's - thigh bones - you can see the size from someones shoe on the right !!

    This is a fossilised tree - a conifer . All these plants & animal fossils are from a time when Winton was at approximately the same position as Tasmania is now - hence the completely different foliage etc .

   This is a complete neck section from a Sauropod - there's a couple of volunteer workers there , toiling away with air drills , cleaning the fossils up .

    Here's a few more at the workstation .

    This is from the top of the jump up , and is solid rock , trees & spinifex only growing in cracks .

    Quite spectacular country we live in .

   Here's a pelvis , vertebrae , ribs & femurs from a Sauropod .

These are from a Theropod like the first photo .

   These are life-size replica's of Sauropods , the larger about 5m tall at the middle of the back

    And this is inside the March of the Titanosaurs exhibit . It's about 55m long and has all sorts of footprints in it - Theropds , turtles , crocodiles , Lungfish & the larger sauropods.

   This to give a little scale to the sauropods - he / she was reasonably friendly , and didn't mind a nose rub .

   This is looking back into the Williams Valley back toward Winton .

If you need to know more , you best come and have a look for yourselves , it's well worth it !!

 Here's a map link :- https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1AOnitg1OEKt0uKKyxq974_nI8rq9Vhc&usp=sharing