Tiny mammal jaw found at Inverloch - image by Steve Morton (Monash University)
The dinosaur dreaming digsite at Flat Rocks, Inverloch is a rather special as it has yeilded over 10,000 fossils from a time when the rift was developing between Australia and Antarctica. I find one of the most significant to be a tiny mammal jaw (above) which is smaller than a fingernail. It is due to this fossil that all material removed from the fossil rich layer must be broken into sugar cube sized chunks before being assessed for fossil material.
Map of fossil locations courtsey of the Dinosaur Dreaming website.
The fossils themselves are found in a flood deposit / conglomerate which formed as part of a braided river environment, now called the Strazlecki Group. A large variety of fossils have been found in this region (above) and I'm told the small greyish lump in the photo below is one such fossil fragment.
Also found in this area (but away from the fossil extraction site) are a set of dinosaur footprints. Located on the shore platform, they are slowly erroding and probably won't exist in a couple of years. This year I took a picture with my camera case for scale. The footprints are outlined in a slightly darker sediment and feature two three towed footprints overlaid on each other. The feet themselves are about 1.5x bigger than mine (see my hiking shoe toe for scale as well)
If you want more information about this site, or are interested in joining the team at the dig on their next summer campaign, checkout the dinosaur dreaming website. If you want some awesome pictures of some of the fossils they've recovered, this post by Tom Rich on The Conversation has some great images.
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