I had heard on the radio yesterday of a new discovery at Winton-the first discovery in decades of three new dinosaurs not previously known.

Three New Species of Dinosaurs Found in Australia - One Described as Like Velociraptor, but many times bigger and more terrifying



Original Article
http://chattahbox.com/science/2009/07/03/three-new-species-of-dinosaurs-found-in-australia-one-described-as-like-velociraptor-but-many-times-bigger-and-more-terrifying/

(ChattahBox)The laid-back outback town of Winton, Queensland Australia, is known for its sheep farms, the itinerant sheep shearers known as swaggies romanticized in the song Waltzing Matilda, and for its fantastic dinosaur fossils.

Recently, paleontologists discovered three new species of dinosaurs near Wintons Fossil Triangle, an ancient lake bed known for its wealth of dinosaur skeletons.

A team of Australian paleontologists dated the new dinosaur finds to the middle of the Cretaceous period, about 100 million years ago. The three brand new species include a ferocious carnivore and two herbivores.

All of the dinosaurs were appropriately named after characters in the song, Waltzing Matilda, with the carnivore named Banjo Patterson and the gentle leaf eaters named, Clancy and Matilda.

Banjo is the most complete meat-eating dinosaur skeleton ever found in Australia and its described as larger and more fearsome than the raptors featured in the movie Jurassic Park.

The herbivores, Clancy and Matilda represent new species of titanosaurs, which were the largest creatures to have ever roamed the earth. Clancy was a tall and slender giraffe-like creature, while Matilda was a hippo-like dinosaur.

Australia, because of its isolation developed its own vegetation, which led to unique dinosaur species not found in other parts of the world.

The area of Winton, called Lark Quarry features amazing dinosaur tracks from the Cretaceous period, which is recognized as the worlds only evidence of an ancient dinosaur stampede.

The three new species of dinosaurs were announced together with the opening of the Winton Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History.

The amazing details of the dinosaur finds are available in the journal PLOS One.

Australian dinosaur that lived 98M years ago found

Original Article
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090703/ap_on_sc/as_australia_dinosaurs

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AP In this undated photo supplied by Queensland Museum, paleontologist Scott Hocknull analyses the Diamantinasaurus

By ROD McGUIRK, Associated Press Writer Rod Mcguirk, Associated Press Writer Fri Jul 3, 7:27 am ET

CANBERRA, Australia Scientists have confirmed for the first time that Australia was once home to a dinosaur that was big, fast and terrifying, and they've named it like something from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Meet the Australovenator.

The beast was a 1,100 pound (500 kilogram) meat-eating predator with three slashing claws on each of its powerful forelimbs that stalked the Outback 98 million years ago, researchers said in a report published Friday.

Fossilized remnants of its limb bones, ribs, jaw and fangs were found along with bones of two other new species of gigantic, long-necked herbivores weighing up to 22 tons (20 metric tons) in Queensland state over the past three years.

The discovery, analyzed in a 51-page report published in the peer-reviewed online science journal PLoS ONE, was the first substantial find of large dinosaurs in Australia to be revealed in 28 years.

Paleontologists have described Australia as new frontier in vertebrate paleontology and an untapped resource in the world's understanding of the dinosaur age because so few fossils have been found there. This is largely because the relatively flat continent has long been geologically stable. The movement of tectonic plates in other continents has forced layers of rock bearing fossils tens of millions of years old to the surface making them easier to find.

In the latest Queensland find, paleontologists bulldozed top soil more than three feet (a meter) deep to expose the sandy clay that held the fossils.

The finders nicknamed the 16-foot (5-meter) long carnivore, Australovenator wintonensis (pronounced oss-tra-low-VEN'-ah-tor win-TON'-en-sis), "Banjo," after the poet A.B. "Banjo" Paterson who in 1885 penned Australia's unofficial anthem "Waltzing Matilda" on a sheep ranch near Winton a cattle town that lies closest to where the dinosaur bones were found. Banjo's Latin name means "Winton's Southern Hunter."

"The cheetah of his time, Banjo was light and agile," the report's lead author, Scott Hocknull, a Queensland Museum paleontologist, said in a statement.

"He's Australia's answer to Velociraptor, but many times bigger and more terrifying," Hocknull added, referring to the turkey-sized prehistoric predators recreated with artistic license in the "Jurassic Park" movies.

The other two finds 52-foot- (16-meter-) long herbivores were previously unknown types of titanosaur, the largest dinosaurs that ever lived. The giraffe-like Wintonotitan wattsi (pronounced win-ton-oh-TIE-tan wot-SIGH) and nicknamed Clancy translates from Latin as "Watts' Winton Giant." The Diamantinasaurus matildae (pronounced dye-man-TEEN'-ah-sor-us mah-TIL'-day) resembled a hippopotamus and has been nicknamed Matilda; the Latin name translates as "Matilda's Diamantina River Lizard."

All three lived in the mid-Cretaceous period which extended from 145 million years to 65 million years ago.

Matilda's and Banjo's bones were mingled; Hocknull suspects Matilda became stuck in river mud and that Banjo fell into the same fatal trap while moving in for the kill.

"The jewel in the crown for us is Banjo because it's the most complete meat-eating dinosaur ever found in Australia," Hocknull said.

"All of the carnivorous dinosaurs that we've had in the past were only known from a single bone or tooth," he added.

John Long, a Museum Victoria paleontologist who was not connected with the find, said it was "very exciting stuff."

Long said the last "truly big" dinosaur found in Australia was the partial skeleton of a 30-foot- (9-meter-) long herbivore named Muttaburrasaurus which was found near the Queensland town of Muttaburra in 1981.

Long said only single large dinosaur bones had been found since then.

"This is the first time we've got partially articulated skeletons," Long said. "There is enough of the bones to reconstruct them quite confidently."

"We know so little about the Australian dinosaur fauna that any major paper like this is a massive advance on our previous knowledge," he said.

Hocknull said his team would continue unearthing more bones of the three dinosaurs as well as other sites in the Winton area, where fossil bones have been found scattered on the surface since the 1930s.