I’ve always liked digging up a bone — my own is good, but someone else’s is better. It’s not something I’ve ever thought humans appreciated — I’ve stood back in hope watching The Boss digging things up, but it’s always pesky tree roots or old plastic pipes left by a long-forgotten tomato grower.

So I have to admit that the humans have outdone themselves this time.

I’m talking about the amazing fossil find that has Queenslanders all abuzz. Not just any old bone, mind you, but a 100 million-year-old ichthyosaur — one of those wave-slicing, fish-lizard giants from the age when the land was wild, wet and, quite frankly, a bit too soggy for my liking. And for a dog who enjoys a long swim down the river, that’s saying something.

The archaeologists say this ichthyosaur was the size of a small bus and a few of them were on the telly, yapping on about vertebrae, skull fragments and “remarkable preservation”. I wagged in agreement: if I’d unearthed a bone like that, you wouldn’t hear the end of it.

Located 100km south of McKinlay, near Winton in western Queensland, the incredible specimen, thought to belong to the species Platypterygius australis, measures a whopping seven metres in length.

That’s one big fish. The Boss says it had the biggest eyes of any dinosaur, enabling it to see long distances in deep water — it was an apex predator, you’d have to say.

The skeleton includes a complete vertebral column, intact left flipper, partial right flipper, rare hind flippers, partial tail fin and a nearly complete skull and torso — making it one of the most scientifically valuable marine reptile fossils in Australia.

The discovery was made on Toolebuc Station by fossil fan Cassandra Prince, while fossicking in 2023. The specimen was carefully excavated the following year by Ms Prince and her family, who own the neighbouring property.

It’s another win for Winton, like Longreach a favourite of The Boss, and their growing list of things to show off: they include the Stockman’s Hall of Fame, the Qantas museum at Longreach and the Age of Dinosaurs museum, perched on a high mesa 25km out of Winton. It will host the new specimen.

Just an hour south of Winton is the world-famous Lark Quarry, which now hosts the Dinosaur Stampede National Monument, where the dinosaur trackways were formed.

It was here that a herd of at least 150 small two-legged dinosaurs, including carnivorous coelurosaurs about the size of chickens and slightly larger plant-eating ornithopods came to drink at the edge of a lake about 95 million years ago.

Over 3300 footprints of these long-extinct dinosaurs are scattered over the rock face, stark evidence of the terror they must have experienced as they fled the scene upon the arrival of a large theropod.

It’s clever, the way the earth keeps telling ancient stories, dribbling them out from time to time. Woof!

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Wednesday, 22nd February 2023

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