About 113 million years ago, the body of a small dinosaur that roamed the lush landscape around what is now the south-west coast of Victoria came to rest among tree trunks and branches at the bottom of an ancient river.
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Fast-forward millions of years to the early 2000s, and sea erosion had revealed fossilised parts of that same dinosaur’s body embedded in dark grey sandstone on a rocky outcrop off Cape Otway.
The dinosaur – a new species called Diluvicursor pickeringi that got around on its two hind legs – was described as ‘turkey-sized’ by dinosaur paleontologist Matt Herne to help people form a picture of the creature’s size.
The scientist was surprised the“turkey-sized” label caught on.
“Well it’s small, but it’s not as small as a chicken, but maybe not as big as an emu,” Dr Herne said.
“It runs around on its two hind legs like you would see an emu or ostrich or turkey do.”
Dr Herne has worked to understand the sleek-bodied, herbivorous species, which belonged to the ornithopod group of dinosaurs, for much of the past decade.
He said the two to three kilogram dinosaur, which lived during the time of the Australian-Antarctic rift valley, was probably hunted by meat-eating dinosaurs around at the same.
Victoria was unusual in its high diversity of dinosaur species during the period, Dr Herne said
“Diluvicursor shows for the first time that there were at least two distinct body types among closely-related ornithopods – small, two-legged grazing dinosaurs, in this part of Australia,” he said.
“One called Leaellynasaura was lightly built with an extraordinarily long tail, while the other – Diluvicursor – was more solidly built, with a far shorter tail.”
The specimen was found by volunteer George Caspar in 2005, but details outlining research into the dinosaur have only recently been published in an international journal.
Other dinosaur fossils were discovered at a nearby spot called Dinosaur Cove during the 1980s and 90s.
Dr Herne said the “mind-blowingly fascinating” study of dinosaurs was the closest thing to time travel.
“With the facts you’re finding in the rocks, you can draw and paint a picture and see it in your mind and as a scientist you can reconstruct these things based on the data,” he said.
“You can try to reconstruct the world as it was – in this case 113 million years ago.”
The fossils of the Diluvicursor pickeringi, named after Museum Victoria’s collection manager David Pickering, will soon be on display at the Melbourne Museum.
