DISCOVERIES IN QUEENSLAND

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 18, 15 October 1927, Page 26

DISCOVERIES IN QUEENSLAND

GIANT DINOSAURS

Among all the discoveries of giant extinct animals in Australia nothing more startling has been found than the gigantic bones of an enormous dinosaur recently unearthed in Queensland. These remains were found by Air. Arthur J Browne, on the Eurotnbah' Creek, a tributary of the Dawson River. The director of the Queensland Museum (Mr. Heber A. Longman) has described this gigantic vegetable-feeding reptile of the Durham Downs, and has called it Rhoetosaurus Brownei. The name he has given to the new genus of reptiles is derived from Rhoetos, the giant who, according to Greek mythology, sprang from the blood of Uranos The specific name does honour to the original finder of the specimen (says F. Chapman, A.L.S. in the “Melbourne Age”). It is always interesting to read of the way in which extinct animals are found, and here we have it from the author’s pen. He says:—"The remains were partly exposed, but mostly buried under soil on a slope near the bank of a small gully which runs into Eurombah Creek. At the time of our visit the muchabraded lateral surfaces of about a dozen vertebrae could be distinguished on the surface. Some of these were practically in juxtaposition’. These vertebrae and the associated matrix have apparently been weathered out of the original- formation. . As the result of spade and mattock work many additional fragments were unearthed, these being irregularly scattered in the soil over an area of several yards. Fully a ton of material, apart from fragments of sandstone, was recovered in this way within two days.” The bones of the Rhoetosaurus consisted of practically the whole of the backbone, the bones of the pelvic arch, and some limb bones. These were so firmly embedded in natural cement, either of a concretionary clay ironstone or a fine-grained slimy sandstone, as to defy separation from the matrix. These conditions of embedding seem to show that the reptile had probably been bogged in a particularly deep swamp, possibly in an adverse season, when it was enfeebled by having insufficient food Like the Giant Diprotodon of Lake Callabonna, it, too,, may have wandered so far into the mire that it was unable to extricate itself. The .centra of the vertebrae 'n Rhoetosaurus, in common with most of this group, arc hollowed at the back (opisthocoelous). The antcrier vertebrae are very large and heavy. The neural spines are. stout and not verv much elongated. Mr. Longmap supposes' the caudal vertebrae to number about 30, or 35 at most, and thinks that this Queensland reptile did not possess a whip-like tail, as in the great Diplodocus, of Colorado. Tn characters of the chevron plates the Queensland dinosaur resembles Cetiosaurus leedsi, found Tn the Oxford clay of Peterborough, in England, and measuring about

CO feet in length. Judging from the solid nature of the articulation of the tail bones, Mr. Longman considers that the tail was not possessed of great flexibility, but was somewhat rigid, and could, therefore, be used with the hind legs, as a tripod. It would thus be enabled to feed on the leaves of trees in a sitting posture, as was likely with the Giant Sloth and the Iguanodon. The Durham Downs, at the time when these animals were alive, must have worn a very different aspect from that of the present day. Judging from the quantity’ of plant remains embedded in the rocks where the bones of this giant reptile lie buried the country must then have been covered with an almost tropical jungle of ferns, fern-palms, and coniferous trees. That Rhoetosaurus was a vegetable feeder we conclude from its relationship to other similar reptiles, found chiefly in Colorado; and we may imagine the great, lumbering creatures, with their long necks and still longer tails, ambling about among the ferny and reedy swamps in the neighbourhood of what is now the Durham Downs during the Jurassic period of, perhaps, 30,000,000 years ago. In his two interesting papers in the memoirs of the Queensland’ Museum, Mr. Longman refers this reptile to the family of the Camarasauridae, restorations of the type genus of which figures are here published. These were a race of true giants, for the natural group of the Camarasaurians includes . all the largest known “terrible . reptiles,” as the name dinosaur implies. To the same .genus of extinct monsters is now referred the Atlantosaurus, which roamed through the old Jurassic forests ol Colorado. To form an idea of the enormous dimensions of the Queensland Rhoetosaurus we have Mr. Longman’s estimate of the length of. its skeleton when complete, that it attained a length of more than 40 feet. As for the weight of the living beast, judging from the data that we possess of living elephants, ‘l would be inclined to put this down as eight to ten tons Another near relative’ of the Australian Rhoetosaurus is the extinct leptile of the Upper Jurassic beds of Wyoming, in Colorado, called Brontosaurus, a thigh bone of which will shortly be placed on view in the National Museum. This animal mav merit the name of “Thunder Lizard,” though whether this term referred to its footfall or to its sneeze we cannot say with certainty. In view of the fact that scanty remains of other dinosaurs, as the carnivorous Megalosaurus end the herbivorous Iguanodon, have already been found in Australian rocks, the possibilities of unearthing similar relics of the past in this country are boundless. Verv little has been done in this, way compared with what has been achieved in fossil exploration in the United States and other lands by American investigators