QUEER FOSSILS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 144, 21 June 1930, Page 10

QUEER FOSSILS

3,000,000 YEARS OLD

FOpND IN AUSTRALIA

(From "The Posts's" Representative.) SYDNEY, 12th June.

Relics of sea creatures that lived millions of years ago were recently found in the Mount Gambier district, South Australia, by the palaeontologist of tho National Museum in Melbourne, and they are now on view at the Fossil Galleries there. The fruits of the expedition arc regarded of much scientific value, arid they are certainly of popular interest. ,The specimens include- several which are finer than any" of the kind previously discovered.

Mr. R. A. Keble, who was mainly responsible for the discoveries, worked over an ancient sea-bed where ' tho Rev. Julian Tenison-Wood many years ago found isolated plates of a starfish in coralline limestone. The fragments, snggestcd a starfish of large size, and for seventy years fossil hunters have been going to the- territory hoping to find complete specimens. Mr. Keblo obtained an arm and. portion of tho central disc of this famous starfish which nourished between 2,500,000 and •3,000,000 years ago. It provefl to be- a species of Pcntagonastcr, as its ' discoverer surmised.

This remarkable-creature measured 11 inches across the arrhs and disc. It must have been of the ijommon genera of the Miocene Sea. Though bo ancient, it is an infant compared with, some fossil starfish that have been, obtaiued from tlic Silurian beds near Melbourne, which arc now the subject of research by Mr. Keble. Tho coralline limestone hi which the Mount Gambier starfish was found is composed almost entirely of minuta polyzoa, loosely cemented into a calcareous Aggregate. One very fino slab' represents the sea-bed as it waa many ages ago. You sco nothing but marine organisms, even whe'h examining the slab through a. magnifying glass. In the samo ancient bed aro the vertebrae of whales and sharks* teeth. ■ ■ -: . '• ■