GIANT DINOSAURS

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 36, 11 August 1927, Page 19

GIANT DINOSAURS

FOUND IN QUEENSLAND

NEED -FOB PDKTHER EESEARCH

Among all the discoveries of giant extinct animals in Australia nothing more startling lias been found than the gigantic bones of an enormous dinosaur recently unearthed in Queensland, writes F. Chapman, A.L.S., in the Melbourne "Argus/ Iheso remains were fouud by Mr. Arthur hntarv WUfV n ihe Eurombali Creek, a tri- » If rt tk ntam Kiver- Tlle directoi ot the Queensland Museum (Mr. Heber A. Longman) has described this 6'gantic vegetable-feeding reptile of the saurus Brownei. The name he has given fmm T?ineT genVs of re»tiles ■» Waived f n r iho£to!' ,tke Giant who, according of Ur^, my Thh° loeyi .™ S Wn the blood ol Uiauos. ihe specific name does honour to tlie original finder of the specimen, wav hi tef ln*?reßtinE to read of the way in which extinct animals are found He sX^TIT * &6m th* other's pen.' j i'-i c """""i were partly exwhich runs into Buronibah Creek. At the aLTfrlf ay dS- Fu"y a ton of'materia! recovUVrM 31*8 °? sandstone was recovered in this way within two days" 111 *f +1? 6 Whole of the backbone, tabE, Tk Pelvis arch ' and « l,^ 5 ■ # J ll6? 0 were so firmly embedded in natural cement, either of r concretionary clay ironstone or a fine grained tKwv* o™' Mto ly fiom the matrix These conditions of embedding seem to show that the reptile had proswamt, -?f ge<? m a Particularly deep swamp, possibly m an adverse season when ,t 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 m Rhoetosaurus, in common Z iV,m°h i° f, t!?'S, group ' are followed at the back (opisthocoelous). The anterior vertebrae are very large and heavy, lne neural spmes are stout and not very much elongated. Mr. Longman supposes the caudal vertebrae to number about *i! lrJ ;y> i i5 r tnirty-five at most, and thinks tnat this Queensland reptile did not possess a whip-like tail, as in the great Diprodocus, of Colorado. In certain characters of the chevron plates the Queensand . dinosaur resembles Cetiosaurius leedsi, found in the Oxford clay of Peterborough, in England, and measuring about 60ft in length. Judging from the solid nature of the articulation j£ 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 oa the leaves of trees in a sitting posture, as was likely with the Giant Sloth and the iEuanodon.

Ihe 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 J^rns, fern-palms, and coniferous trees; Ihat Rhoetosauruswas 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 Jong necks and 'still longer tails, ambling about among the ferny and reedy swamps in the neighbourhood ef 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 ra'oe 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 of Colorado. To form an idea of the enormous dimensions of the Queensland Khoetosaurua we have My. Longman's estimate of the length of its skeleton when complete, that it attained a length of more than 40ft. As for the weight of the living beast, judging from the data that we nossess of living elephants, I would be inclined to put this down as eight to ten tons. Another near relative of the Australian Rhoteosaurus is the extinct reptile 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. I Thia animal may merit the name o£

"Thunder Lizard," though whether this term referred to ita footfall or to its sneeze, we cannot say with certainty. In view of _ the fact that scanty remains of other dinosaurs, as the carnivorous Megalosaurua and the htrbivorous Ikuanodon, have already been found in Australian rocks, the possibilities of unearthing similar relics of the past in thia country are boundless. Very little has been done in this -way compared with what has been achieved i» fossil .exploration in the United States and other lands by American investigators.