Dinosaur Bones

6/5/2019 Dinosaur Bones Shimmering With Opal Reveal a New Species in Australia | Science | Smithsonian
JUNE 3, 2019
Dinosaur Bones Shimmering With Opal

Reveal a New Species in Australia
|
Science
Three decades ago, opal miner Bob Foster was getting frustrated while
digging around in his mining eld just outside of Lightning Ridge, a
dust-swept town in outback New South Wales. Foster and his family
spent hours a day searching for a glimmer of rainbow-shaded gems
embedded in the rocks 40 feet underground. But all they found were a
bunch of dinosaur bones.
“We would see these things that looked like horses,” says Foster.
“Then we would just smash them up to see if there were any opals
inside.”
But there was something strange about the growing collection of bones
accumulating in Foster’s living room. Piling the bones into two
suitcases, Foster took a 450-mile train ride to the Australian Museum
in Sydney. When museum curator Alex Ritchie examined Foster’s bone
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur-bones-encrusted-opal-reveal-new-species-australia-180972332/ 1/8
collection dumped on his desk, he recognized them for what they were
and knew immediately that an expedition to the opal miners site, called
the “Sheepyard,” was in order.
The excavation team wasn’t disappointed. In 1984, they hauled out the
most complete dinosaur skeleton ever found in New South Wales. The
bones, which were encrusted with sparkling opal, were taken back to
the Australian Museum for public display. Two decades later, Foster
took the fossils back and donated them to the Australian Opal Centre in
Lightning Ridge.
A toe bone of Fostoria, spectacularly preserved in opal. (Robert A. Smith,

courtesy Australian Opal Centre.)
While the stunning fossils had been seen by plenty of museum visitors,
no one had formally studied them. Now, researchers have nally taken
a closer look at what was uncovered near Foster’s family home 35 years
ago. The ndings, published today in the Journal of Vertebrate
Paleontology, reveal a new species, the rst fossil evidence of a
dinosaur herd in Australia, and the most complete opalized dinosaur
skeleton in the world.
“This is unheard of in Australia,” says Phil Bell, the study’s lead author
and paleontologist at the University of New England in Armidale, New
South Wales. “There were around 60 odd bones in the entire collection,
which is a remarkable number for an Australian dinosaur.”
The glittering remains, encrusted with opal, represent the newly

described species Fostoria dhimbangunmal. The species is the youngest
Australian member of the iguanodontian dinosaurs, a plant-eating
group that had a horse-shaped skull and a similar build to the
kangaroo. The United Kingdom’s Iguanodon and Australia’s
Muttaburrasaurus are among Fostoria’s more famous cousins. The
name of the new dinosaur is a nod to its original discoverer, with
‘dhimbangunmal’ meaning ‘sheep yard’ in the Yuwaalaraay,
Yuwaalayaay and Gamilaraay languages of the Indigenous people living
in the area near Lightening Ridge.
Compared to China and North America, Australia is hardly regarded as

a prehistoric hotspot for dinosaur hunters. Over the past century, just
10 species of dinosaur have been discovered in Australia, including the
three-toed Australovenator and the long-necked Wintonotitan and
Diamantinasaurus, which were discovered in Queensland last year.
Lightning Ridge, one of the richest sources of opal in the world, is the
only site in New South Wales where dinosaur bones have been found.
Since the 1930s, opal miners like Foster have dug up 100-million-year-
old bone and tooth fragments by accident. One such discovery, an
opalized jawbone discovered by Bell in late 2018, turned out to be a new
dog-sized dinosaur species called Weewarrasaurus pobeni.
“The discovery of dinosaur groups unique to the southern hemisphere

suggests that our current understanding of dinosaur evolution is
incomplete,” says Ralph Molnar, a paleontologist at Museum of
Northern Arizona in Flagsta . “Australian dinosaurs are globally
important, and as more discoveries are made, they will play an
increasingly signi cant role in our understanding of that time.”
When Bell rst laid eyes on the pile of fragments, he assumed that they
all came from one animal. Hours of CT scanning at the local radiology
clinic revealed large fragments of backbone, skull, limb, foot and hip.
But something about the massive collection didn’t add up. “There were
all these duplicates, and we couldn’t stick the bones together to make a
full skeleton,” Bell says. “What really hit it o was when we realized
that we had four shoulder blades, all of di erent sizes.”
One of the fossil vertebrae of Fostoria, spectacularly preserved in opal.

(Robert A. Smith, courtesy Australian Opal Centre)
There was only one explanation: Each shoulder blade belonged to a

separate individual. The largest shoulder blade likely belonged to an
adult, while the three smaller pieces were from juvenile dinosaurs. The
four skeleton remains suggest that Fostoria, which lacked big claws
and sharp teeth, stuck together in herds or family groups to protect
themselves from predators. Aside from trackways of dinosaur
footprints in Queensland and Western Australia, there had been no
other fossil evidence of dinosaur herds found in the country until now.
Fostoria’s at teeth indicate that the animals fed
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur-bones-encrusted-opal-reveal-new-species-australia-180972332/ on plants and foraged 6/8
on two legs. Bell says that the 16-foot dinosaurs were “quite plain to
look at, with no extravagant horns or crests.”
The land these dinosaurs roamed around 100 million years ago in the
mid-Cretaceous was much di erent than the dry, shrubby scenery of
Lightning Ridge today. While Australia was part of Gondwanaland—the
supercontinent that included South America, Africa, Antarctica and
India—the historic mining town was located 60 degrees south of where
it is today, making its climate more mild than current temperatures.
The parched land in the area was once dotted with rivers, lagoons and
oodplains that cut through lush vegetation.
The layers of sediment that buried ancient plants and animals were rich
in silica, a building-block of sand. Over time, this silica seeped into
cracks and holes in fossils, eventually forming opal in dead animals
such as snails, sh, turtles, bird and mammals. While Fostoria’s
appearance may have been “plain” while it was alive, the opalized
fossils it left behind now shimmer with streaks of green and deep blue.
Bell hopes the ndings shine a spotlight on Australia’s dinosaur

diversity, which will help paleontologists uncover clues about the
Gondwanan environment and the plants and animals that inhabited the
prehistoric continent. While extensive research on South America’s
paleontological history has revealed insights about the western half of
Gondwanaland, the eastern side continues to be shrouded in mystery.
With Antarctica blanketed in ice and most of the New Zealand continent
underwater, sites like Lightning Ridge are key to unravelling the
southern hemisphere’s ancient past.
“Australia absolutely did have dinosaurs, and they were totally

di erent and exciting,” Bell says. “They are just not in text books, but
we’re going to change that.”
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6/5/2019 Dinosaur Bones Shimmering With Opal Reveal a New Species in Australia | Science | Smithsonian

Dinosaur Bones Shimmering With Opal

A toe bone of Fostoria, spectacularly preserved in opal. (Robert A. Smith,

The glittering remains, encrusted with opal, represent the newly

Compared to China and North America, Australia is hardly regarded as

“The discovery of dinosaur groups unique to the southern hemisphere

One of the fossil vertebrae of Fostoria, spectacularly preserved in opal.

There was only one explanation: Each shoulder blade belonged to a

Bell hopes the ndings shine a spotlight on Australia’s dinosaur

“Australia absolutely did have dinosaurs, and they were totally

Viewed using Just Read

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