# Dinosaurs from Darwin



## SteveNT (Jul 31, 2011)

*Dinosaurs from Darwin + pics*

I promised Pythonmum I would post some pics of the fossils I find in Darwin Harbour. The mudstone reefs they are in are underwater most of the year but are exposed by the 7 meter + spring tides in our wet season. 

They are mostly plesiosaur (loch ness monster) and icthyosaur (reptilian dolphin) vertebrae but I have found some XL vertebrae from pliosaurs also. Age is mid Cretaceous. 

There is a lot of fossilised timber also and I have given several milk crates full to the local Museum. Hopefully a Phd student will try to reconstruct the Cretaceous flora of the Darwin region from all the material.






articulated icthyosaur vertebrae







plesiosaur vertebrae




fossilised wood




smaller plesiosaur vertebrae

After a cyclone all the weed, mud, coral etc is washed away and you can find almost complete animals exposed. They are too fragile to chisel out so I look for the ones that have weathered out naturally in the rubble heaps around the reef then soak in vinegar for a week (gets rid of any attached shells/ coral etc) and voila!

The museum gets first pick of my finds and they have a lot of my fossils.

Hope you like them!


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## Wally (Jul 31, 2011)

Can't see any pics Steve.


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## SteveNT (Jul 31, 2011)

Woops! Gotta go out, will fix it when I return! FIXED see above!


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## Darlyn (Jul 31, 2011)

Wow they are amazing!
Very interesting pics thanks for sharing : )


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## Wally (Jul 31, 2011)

Geez, not just your average fern leaf in a rock. Great finds!


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## Renenet (Jul 31, 2011)

That is so cool.


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## tropicbreeze (Jul 31, 2011)

That's great. I've never really associated Darwin with fossils (apart from some of those strange 2 legged ones, LOL). Inland there's lots of ancient sandstones that pre-date most obvious lifeforms that might have left traces. Not real fossil country.


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## pythonmum (Jul 31, 2011)

Thanks Steve! That is great stuff. I didn't get time to knock around on the beaches, but wasn't the right tide to find any during my brief stay, anyway. My main souvenir was a skull from Crocodylus park. You really know you are in the NT when no one blinks at an Xray that shows a big croc skull in your carry-on luggage . I am writing it off on tax as an educational expense as I intend to use it in teaching. After all, I showed it to a few students.... Do you have any photos of the pyritised ammonites? I have seen a few and they are usually lovely, but I am pretty sure they had plastic brushed on quickly.


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## snakes123 (Jul 31, 2011)

I love fossilised wood


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## Black.Rabbit (Jul 31, 2011)

That's awesome!! Thanks for sharing =)

What's the most amazing/interesting thing you have found?


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## Darlyn (Jul 31, 2011)

snakes123 said:


> I love fossilised wood



I live with a fossil, so I'm with you.


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## snakes123 (Jul 31, 2011)

haha, I like it since i learnt how it is made from a volcano and mudslides


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## SteveNT (Jul 31, 2011)

equinny said:


> That's awesome!! Thanks for sharing =)
> 
> What's the most amazing/interesting thing you have found?[/QUOTE
> 
> ...


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## pythonmum (Jul 31, 2011)

Is that 4-armed Permian creature an invertebrate? (I assume) It may sit in collections for a while before anyone figures it out. That happened with bits of _Anomalocaris_ until people figured out that what they thought were 2 or 3 different organisms were actually parts of one big, nasty predator. If you don't know the right people to send the specimen or photos to, it may never get identified. The paleo world is really pretty small when you get to specialised areas.


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## SteveNT (Jul 31, 2011)

pythonmum said:


> Is that 4-armed Permian creature an invertebrate? (I assume) It may sit in collections for a while before anyone figures it out. That happened with bits of _Anomalocaris_ until people figured out that what they thought were 2 or 3 different organisms were actually parts of one big, nasty predator. If you don't know the right people to send the specimen or photos to, it may never get identified. The paleo world is really pretty small when you get to specialised areas.



Spot on pythonmum. I carried one of the 4 specimens we found back to the car (with permission of the senior man for that area) and at 20kg on a hot day I doubt I could do it today. The palaeontologist for the time (Dirk Migarian RIP) posted photos to Permian experts worldwide. There were suggestions of a coral or maybe a sponge. But bottom line it's still a mystery. As far as I know.


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## pythonmum (Jul 31, 2011)

An extinct mystery, too. Sounds like it was pretty darn big. I am absolutely no use with inverts. I tend to group them into Arthropods, worm-like things, corals and 'other'. It is enough to make an invertebrate biologist cringe . Mammals are a different story...


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## SteveNT (Jul 31, 2011)

Sure are, the mammal like reptiles from the Permian may be found here, we have the rocks, but really there are so few people looking, let alone people who may have a clue what they're looking at. 

Currently there are no dinosaurs in the Territory ( marine reptiles being not included) but I know where two are. In both cases they are of great cultural significance and realistically, I will never see them. One was described to me so well that I am sure it is an anklyosaur. And the geology backs that up. 

Never mind, this place is huge, most rocks are exposed and I just keep looking! All things come to those.....


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## waruikazi (Aug 1, 2011)

That is pretty awesome Steve! I've looked and looked but only ever found a prawn looking thing. I've heard Nightcliff is the place for the Ichthiosaurs.


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## SteveNT (Aug 1, 2011)

waruikazi said:


> That is pretty awesome Steve! I've looked and looked but only ever found a prawn looking thing. I've heard Nightcliff is the place for the Ichthiosaurs.



Lol they tell everyone Nightcliff to keep them away from the real location. I will pm you about where to look.

Where did you find the prawny thing?



waruikazi said:


> That is pretty awesome Steve! I've looked and looked but only ever found a prawn looking thing. I've heard Nightcliff is the place for the Ichthiosaurs.



Now I think of it I know what you are talking about. The fossils are pretty common in mangrove areas and especially Gunn Point. They are a burrowing mud prawn that still exists in the mangroves, most of the fossils are aound 2-5,000 years old so very recent. I think they are called thassylinna or something like that.

There are beautiful pyritised ammonites at Gunn Point from the late Cretaceous (70mybp). They outcrop in mudstone on the shoreline. 
There is a large monsoon forest gully nearby where the same formation should be exposed but last time I tried to get in I got chased out by a 6 pack of big pigs!


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## waruikazi (Aug 1, 2011)

Gee you know your stuff Steve! It was Gunn Point where the prawn came from.

I figured that saying Nightcliff would have been a bit of a decoy, but when you've got nothing else to go on you need to follow every lead you've got!

Perhaps you need to go fossiling with Guzzo and his spear next time!


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## Enlil (Aug 1, 2011)

Have any of you specimens been identified to genus level?


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## SteveNT (Aug 1, 2011)

"Perhaps you need to go fossiling with Guzzo and his spear next time!"

Ha ha absolutely! You'd never know where he was with that camo though. He could sort out the swine while I slipped through to grab a fossil!

I went out to the reefs in the middle of the night a few times (the big lows in the Dry are in the dark am). It's not great with torchlight and one night I was followed for 3 hours by a 3 meter handbag, Not relaxing. I'm happy to wait for the Wet and get out on the ocean floor in the afternoon.



Enlil said:


> Have any of you specimens been identified to genus level?



Enlil, certainly but I have many many specimens with several museums and really they tell me the names but I forget, only so much you can fit in your head. I like doing the homework, doing the hard yards and then FINDING THEM!!!

Nothing like achieving what you set out to do, to me it's the antiquity, rarity and all the other things I see/ find on that journey that repay me for my efforts.

Dirk Migairin was the paleo I kept in touch with up here but he has sadly gone and his replacement is in the Alice, way too far away for a " come and check this out!!!".


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## pythonmum (Aug 1, 2011)

One of the great challenges in paleontology is having the time to go hunting for fossils. Another is having the time to figure out what you have found! Of course, I should probably add in money to do both. You are lucky to have the time and reason to go exploring. You can let others do the comparison with museum specimens and trawling through old literature to make sure no one described the species in an old obscure publication somewhere. There certainly are many areas of Australia which remain unexplored for fossils. With some of the oldest rocks on earth, there is the potential to find many interesting fossils here. We certainly have a wealth of ancient stromatolites, which you have also found. It will be interesting to see what you turn up in the future, as long as you stay away from those swimming handbags...


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## SteveNT (Aug 2, 2011)

Ha ha, yea the handbags are always a worry.

I have been told about (and seen specimens from) a thin layer of siltstone near the mouth of one of the big rivers up here. It is packed with teeth from several species of sharks. A fisherman taking a leak found them! No idea about the age but the teeth are all completely black. The museum has been given a couple of specimens (but not the pick of the bunch) so I will head out there when the tides are right and pick up a couple of barra or threadfin salmon as recompense for my efforts!!


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## Enlil (Oct 8, 2012)

Ah well SteveNT, thats what paper and pens were invented for.


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## SteveNT (Oct 8, 2012)

Enlil said:


> Ah well SteveNT, thats what paper and pens were invented for.



Then you have to remember where you put the piece of paper and if, after several relocations you still have it?


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## Enlil (Oct 8, 2012)

I put mine under the fossil, you can write it on rock around the fossil, but never on it. Gee Museums know how to devalue these valuable assets.


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## SteveNT (Oct 8, 2012)

Sometimes I am providing milk crates of fossils to the museum. And there are a couple of crates full in my storeroom. I dont really display them that much (they use up herp room )


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## Jeannine (Oct 10, 2012)

did u hear about that boy in Russia (think it was) who went for a walk and found a mammoth?

what i wouldnt give to find something that old

Russian boy discovers wooly 'mammoth of the century' - Yahoo!7 News


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## RobynTRR (Oct 10, 2012)

Interesting, thanks!


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## Enlil (Oct 10, 2012)

The smell of rotting flesh.


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## SteveNT (Oct 10, 2012)

Yea that's right. Did you see the footage of the dog having a discrete chew on the "mammath of the century"? Imagine a frozen elephant thawing and rotting. Pheeeeew!

A pastoralist up here found an articulated diprotodon skeleton recently (secret location) and apparently there is a lot of digging going on there atm. At least bones dont stink!


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## RobynTRR (Oct 11, 2012)

Very cool.


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## albinowoma (Sep 9, 2013)

SteveNT, are you still around ??


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## SteveNT (Sep 9, 2013)

albinowoma said:


> SteveNT, are you still around ??



Sure am? Any reason cobber?


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## albinowoma (Sep 9, 2013)

Just read about the plesio vert and was wondering if you'd send them to people who'd like to have one or two in their collection? And how to go about it? I have a couple of fossilized lobsters from up that way too. Where abouts do you find them? I take it they're pretty common ( as in I got 1 from mt Morgan, along with a couple of crabs) and the other out of the states...on one of the crabs, there was extra material on the back so I chipped away at it and came off down in part to the shell and to think that you're the first person to see that since it died ( esp in fish) is still pretty Amazeing.


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## SteveNT (Sep 10, 2013)

The prawns are very recent, less than 4,000 ybp and come from Gunn Point. They still live in the mangroves. They are very common. The vertebrate material is protected by law so I cant sell or trade. I have an arrangement with the NT Museum, I collect and they take whatever material they want for their collections, I keep the rest.

I havent been out to these reefs for a few years but the tides are right in the next few months. I will find out if I can "gift" specimens to others. Here are some shots from my last visit to the fossil reefs.

Pliosaur vertebrae





Other bone material (bone is brown, mudstone dark grey). Presumably from the same animal as it is all within a few meters. However the area is subject to constantly shifting sand and silt so you never know what will be exposed from 



one day to another.


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## albinowoma (Sep 10, 2013)

I had a look on eBay last night
Thalassina anamola
Blacktown formation
Walsh river 
Queensland. From the USA was $300 lol what a joke

How far out are those specimens? Is there any way you can use water to pressure wash the mud/sand/silt away with? 
How big are they? Do they come up easily?

Also do you know anything about fossilized turtles?


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## SteveNT (Sep 10, 2013)

These Darwin ones are Thalassina also. In the 70's a bloke here sent a shipping container full to the US as fossil scorpions ha ha. Apparently he made a lot of money at the time.

The Cretaceous fossil reefs are 500 meters offshore. Removing the silt/sand would be very temporary, it would be back next tide. They are only accessible during spring tides (for a few hours maybe 12 days a year). After a cyclone near miss or direct hit the reefs are scrubbed completely clean and then you see some amazing things. The problem remains that they are intensley brittle so other than cutting and removing huge slabs of rock they are too difficult to extract without destroying them.

Re turtles, the Wilton area in Qld has plenty. I know where some are here in the Top End but it is a top secret location. Too easy to access and would be destroyed in no time.

Nothing infuriates me more than the destruction of fossils that have been preserved for tens or hundreds of millions of years for a few cheesy dollars. I broke the nose of a hippy I found smashing up fossils on these reefs so he could sell the bits for $5 at a local flea market.


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## albinowoma (Sep 11, 2013)

those damm hippies lol. my grandfather used to make roads across the northern end of oz during the war amongst other places and he had quite a few fossils and wood. one of them was the top half of a turtle shell, the same pattern as todays ones basically(45cm long roughly) but it dissappeared from my mums place ages ago before she moved then when my sis and her husband helped her to tidy the place to sell it they threw out all the "rocks" that were there. fn idiots. mainly large shells, ?leaves and ferns and those cubed/chunky structured lined ( i dont remember them to much exactly ) fan coral looking ones??? and a couple of diff animal boned ones that were interesting to name a few. 
are the turtle shell fossils expensive? just lamenting at what could of been  oh well. i still have two large mother of pearl shells (like large oyster shell) of his tucked away. i walked into a smaller jeweller in bris city and asked roughly how much would they be worth to him and took about 2seconds to say about $200 so i know they are worth more then that, oh year... there's a pearl the size of the first knuckle of ya little finger stuck to one of the halves


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