Alyssa (00:24)
Hello and welcome
back to Fossils in Fiction from a brand new setup in my spare room where my PC now is. And you can now see, if you’re watching this, Clarence in Eurypterid. background, my giant Euripterid
It’s a beautiful, wonderful day in Melbourne for once. There’s some clouds in the sky, but it’s sunny out, which means it’s Hawaiian shirt season, finally. And it’s conference season. If you’ve been keeping up with paleontology news, you’ve probably seen that the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology has just finished its conference in the UK. And we are coming up on another conference for vertebrate enjoyers in South Australia. CAVEPS is a conference that will be happening from…
Monday of next week, the 21st, through to the 30th. And we’ve got some exciting things to tell you about in regards to the end of that conference. So stay tuned.
Travis (01:09)
Yeah, we’ll, we’ll get to that at the end of the episode. It’s going to be fantastic. First, let’s look at Paleo Pulse, our news for the week. Alyssa debate solved. Nanotyrannus and Tyrannosaurus rex are not the same thing according to Zanno and Napoli, a paper published last or earlier this month, earlier in November at Nature.
Alyssa (01:11)
Yeah.
Travis (01:33)
is a fantastic paper, lots of detail. So the paper takes this new specimen of mid-sized Tyrannosaur, which was found together with a Triceratops in 2006, and together these were nicknamed the Duelling Dinosaurs. And the paper says this is not a Tyrannosaurus rex or a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex. It is in fact a mature Nanotyrannus lancensus. So
Previously, Nanotyrannus lancensis had been a species assigned to two other specimens, which were then later argued to be in fact juvenile specimens of Tyrannosaurus But because this species is an adult, it actually now is accepted to represent the the adult stage of that species instead of all three being juvenile T. rex So,
There’s some really key differences that Zanno and Napoli have laid out here between Tyrannosaurus rex and Nanotyrannus being primarily arm length. So that distinguishes this species from T. rex. We all know that T. rex has not just proportionally small arms, but actually quite small arms for an animal that size. And as well as the fact that there are many more teeth in the Nanotyrannus skulls compared to T. rex.
And so actually if these were juvenile T. rex, they would lose a lot of teeth as they grow, which is quite unusual. In a post by Lawrence Witmer on Nature or a commentary on Nature he says, and I quote here, “the fore limbs and especially the hands are absolutely not just relatively longer than they are in even the largest known T. rex species. Whole limb bones actually shrinking during development just doesn’t happen.” And so there’s
some other differences between the species, but they have taken this dinosaur from the dueling dinosaurs specimen. They have said that this is Nanotyrannus lancensus and they also reassigned one of the other specimens to the newly named species Nanotyrannus latheaeus. So we actually have two Nanotyrannus species now, which is pretty exciting, but all up the differences between Nanotyrannus and T. rex are pretty convincing.
And most expert commentators that I’ve seen really have accepted the argument pretty well. Everyone looks at it and says, look, these authors have presented a great deal of evidence. They’ve done it in a very convincing way. This basically settles the debate. But interestingly, one more little tidbit out of the paper, Nanotyrannus seems to be an early diverging Tyrannosaur. And within that, so while it’s within that family of Tyrannosaurs, it’s not actually within Tyrannosauridae.
which is the T. rex family. So it’s actually within the Tyrannosaur family, but not all that closely related to T. rex, which is quite a sort of side note to where it sits and where it’s out. Yeah. But settling the debate and potentially overturning decades of Tyrannosaur research, one of our recent guests, Mark Witton had a photo of his book, King Tyrant in the Bin, which I thought was a bit…
Alyssa (04:35)
You
Travis (04:36)
over over reaction, quite funny nonetheless to illustrate the point that it actually overturns quite a bit because instead of saying these are three potentially juvenile T. rex specimens, which are offer a growth series for T. rex, we now don’t have any juvenile T. rex at all. that’s where it is, but a great paper, really detailed.
It’s actually not finalized. Nature’s done this really interesting thing where they’ve published the paper as it’s been accepted, but it hasn’t been fully copy edited and published officially. So it’s published on nature. It’s not a preprint as such, but it’s like an intermediate stage between accepted and officially being published. But it’s all out there and everyone’s reacted and the debate is done. What do you think of this one?
Alyssa (05:18)
I
it is always sad when we lose a growth series for an animal that captures as much interest as, I mean, a keystone predator like T. rex. But yeah, as many of you in our audience probably know, the debates over whether Nano T. rex and T. rex are related and how so, if so, if it’s part of the growth series, this has been part of the online discourse.
for as long as I’ve been around in paleontology. I mean, I remember this being one of the things that we joke about in undergrad. So there are probably some people out there that are quite invested in this debate. And it’s interesting to kind of see the reaction, yeah, that people like Mark Witton are having online. Word on the street in the paleo world here is that, the paper presents some really solid evidence. And, you know, it wouldn’t be unexpected to see a predator of this size in this location during this period.
But it does make me wonder, where are all of our juvenile T-Rexes? Is this a case of collection bias? Is this a case of maybe like museums not knowing what they have in their store rooms? Or were T. rex just made of chicken nuggets and came out deep fried and slowly became powerful over time, you know?
Travis (06:12)
Hmm.
Did juvenile T. rex just very rarely make it to adulthood perhaps and so the specimens, you know, a lot of them have been crunched up by other predators.
Alyssa (06:33)
like a poplar from Futurama or some kind of equivalent from a different sci-fi series. ⁓ I think it’s really interesting too, because this brings a, this kind of touches on an issue in paleontology that we have a lot, which is when we see a small version of what we think we have a large version of, what exactly are we looking at? Are we looking at something that is a juvenile form? Are we looking at something that might be…
Travis (06:35)
Mmm.
You
Alyssa (06:57)
Asexual dimorphic species where we’re seeing one sex represented and one sex that’s larger being represented by other fossils and Normally when we see things of different sizes, we do look to things like limbo limb bone proportions and other indicators like that
I think the teeth are a pretty compelling argument as well. I mean, you look at the number, the size, the placement, and I think that’s pretty indicative that we’re looking at something that’s a separate species and like you say, maybe a pretty distant relative for T. rex.
Although, I do feel like they should give it a different name. You know? It’s a bit like calling your little cousin, little John, I guess. But you don’t have any other relatives named John.
Travis (07:26)
Yeah, I mean…
Travis (07:32)
tell us about your hadrosaur paper.
Alyssa (07:35)
So this recent paper by Filippo Bertozzo and a research team looked at hadrosaur tail damage from the late Cretaceous period. They looked at over 500 specimens evaluating this idea that’s been around since the 1980s that the vertebrae in these tail bones is damage that’s being done during mating by male hadrosaurs to female hadrosaurs. So if you can kind of imagine…
the logistics in this situation, the female dinosaur would need to lie down on her side in order for a reproductive act to occur. And when this is happening, the male dinosaur, if he’s not very careful, might do damage to the tail section of the female dinosaur. And this is something that is supported by tail damage in similar large herbivorous species. And it’s also supported by a number of different finite element analyses and other
techniques that the team has used to evaluate the damage to the caudal section of these vertebrae. So there were a couple of other theories that are put forward in the paper, including intraspecific competition or the act where the animal is using its tail to whip into other animals and cause damage in that way. But the way in which these vertebrae are broken does not support other hypotheses. It supports the idea that the animal was lying down and this was some kind of like crushing damage.
So it’s really cool. This is a theory that has been around for a long time. And it’s interesting that it’s only with the appearance of a large data set and the evaluation of this data set, according to a large number of analyses, that this is something we can do. And it’s also unusual because a lot of the time with dinosaurs, we’ve never seen soft tissue preservation for things like cloacas outside of tachycerus. And we don’t really see evidence for the reproductive organs inside the dinosaur.
Sexing dinosaurs up to this point is something that’s a little bit of a mystery science and When there is evidence to suggest that there’s gender in the dinosaur world, it’s really exciting It gives us a new understanding of these animals It can tell us maybe a little bit about the specimens that have the tail damage if they are different from specimens that don’t in other ways Maybe we could say more about these genders, but it’s it’s the kind of research that can only really be done now that we have
Travis (09:23)
Mm.
Alyssa (09:45)
this system of globally connected museums and the ability for researchers to travel between different locations. So it’s a really exciting discovery. It’s something that could only exist in the modern day and hopefully we’ll learn more about it in future episodes.
Travis (09:55)
Yeah.
just a little hint there. I really like this paper because it, mean, okay, it’s dinosaur sex, right? That’s cool, no matter how you put it. But aside from that, it lets you figure out which of these are the male and which are the female dinosaurs, more or less, because we couldn’t do that before, right? Birds and…
Alyssa (10:05)
Yeah.
Travis (10:17)
reptiles diverge so much, sometimes the male is larger or has particular display features, sometimes it’s the female is larger or has particular display features. So you can’t go down the line and say with dinosaurs that even where there is maybe a divergence between two different groups within a genus or a species, that these were the males and these were the females. However, if this hypothesis is accurate,
then actually we can. We can point to these hadrosaurs and say, the ones with those injuries are the females. So maybe does that say, what other differences do they have? Does it start to point to more systematic variations between the sexes in those species, if not across all of dinosauria?
Alyssa (10:58)
Yeah.
It’s really exciting, you know? And it speaks to some of the difficulties that we face as paleontologists as well, and getting this kind of information teased out of the fossil record. Mating behaviors and sexual dimorphism, a lot of sexual characteristics don’t preserve well, and a lot of them are indicative of behavior. So anytime we can get evidence for either of those things, it’s really exciting, like behavioral evidence especially. Yeah.
A really cute little paper. Sorry to the female dinosaurs though, it’s quite mean that your tails had to get broken.
Travis (11:24)
Yeah.
who works at Wellington Caves. Now Wellington Caves is one of Australia’s earliest major paleontological sites, earliest discovered by European explorers and scientists that is.
Some of the fossils from there went to the UK where they were named in fact by Richard Owen. These fossils are really emblematic of Australia’s largest megafauna and Rebecca gave me such a good introduction to that megafauna. Wellington Caves is out here on Wiradjuri country in central western New South Wales. It’s actually quite close to where I live. It’s one of the major, if not the biggest paleontological site out here.
and they have a fantastic little museum on site, but more importantly and interestingly, you can go down into several of the caves as well. So here’s my interview with Rebecca.
Fossils And Fiction (12:21)
My name is Rebecca Pedemont Welcome to call me Beck.
and I’m currently acting as the site coordinator here for Wellington Caves. Awesome. Bec, thanks so much for joining us on Fossils and Fiction.
Could you tell me how you ended up working here at Wellington Caves? I certainly can. I started here in 2015 casually as a tour guide, as a side job to my other job working as a veterinary nurse and zookeeper in the region. Okay. So lover of nature, lover of wildlife, and now a cave in my own backyard living in Wellington. Yeah. I wanted to be a part of it.
Moving from the live animals to the dead ones a Little bit less stressful to look after I must admit I’m not worrying about if they’re gonna die overnight. Yeah Unfortunately, unfortunately they’ve already passed Yeah quite quite a long time ago. Yes That’s one animal I don’t know if I would have wanted to me in this area
for much and there’s all of these species I definitely wasn’t going to be able to outrun. My running joke is from the zoo keeping world, which I now transfer over here is to be the second slowest is the motto. It’s an interesting aspect of humanity that we are quite slow. We’re quite weak in most regards.
One of the only things we’re good at is long distance running, being able to run stuff down. And that’s kind of what’s allowed us to be who we are today. So we mentioned those fossils. Do you have a favorite fossil or discovery from Wellington Caves or what particularly fascinates you? Well, it’s really hard to pick one. must admit, Travis, there is so many fascinating fossils here at Wellington Caves and no doubt are quite a few more yet to be.
discovered. So this was a challenging one to think about, but I would have to say for fascination’s point, Wonambi naricotentis. This incredibly large snake that did exist. Huge, nothing like this present in Australia today, not even close. So tell us about Wonambi. What, so big snake. Incredibly large snake, fairly weak jaw, not a constrictor like some of the large snakes that people
might consider and think of today. So thankfully if this large snake was alive that I would be too big for it to consume but bats inhabiting the cave would have made a nice meal for this incredibly large snake and some other species. So whether there would have been anything large equal we had genyornis
so whether that would have been a large enough egg for it to consume. But I do think about the extremely large bats that also existed back then, like Macroderma koppa an incredibly large extinct bat in comparison to the largest bats that we have today. So, yeah, so nowadays Australia has some, we have micro bats, but then we also of course have flying foxes, which are quite well known for their penchant to roost in urban parks.
And
and cause townsfolk a lot of a lot of grief when they do that What are we thinking in terms of this this bat? Is it much bigger? Macroderma koppa. much larger wingspan today Here at Wellington case side note. We’ve been doing a lot of bat studies. Okay, so very pro bats Yeah, very proud with our bat studies that we did that we detected over 16 different species of micro bat in happening our 150 hectare reserve and
Yeah, currently. Yeah, well as well as four species of flying fox. So that’s phenomenal for the range of species we have in this region. Yeah. Yeah. So thankfully though, I say to the guests that the bats are smart enough to choose one of our many caves that we don’t do tours through because they don’t like the lights or the people. Yeah. Yeah. They’re not going to be in the caves that we that we visit. No, no, thankfully not because we are very proud and love to talk about the bats and the habitat that we are.
providing for them, which then comes with the concern. Like you said, sometimes the bats aren’t necessarily the hero species out there. So we’re trying to shed a bit of light on them. mean, flying foxes are beautiful. think they’re really, really cute creatures actually. But a lot of people, as I say, particularly, you know, I talked about urban dwellers and town dwellers in Bathurst and every year the flying foxes come to
roost in Machattie Park in the middle of Bathurst and it’s always cause of most consternation. Yes we do have a migration. We do see them head out most evenings down in Wellington and right across the Dubbo region. They are in the thousands when it comes to the flying foxes.
And part of the education talks I’ve been delivering to schools and to nursing homes and to community is definitely that negative impact of destroying crops. then also from my perspective to share with everybody is how essential they are for the environment, being pollinators and the distributions of seeds. The habitat corridors, one that they need, but are also instilling by living there. thankfully we’re convincing a few people that bats are really good.
Particularly the micro bats. I love telling people that one micro bat can eat about 3000 insects per night and then remind them about mosquitoes and how horrible they are and how many diseases they spread and how essential they are for pest control. I really like when a site that is known for palaeontology or for fossils and extinct animals
is actually also deeply linked into modern day conservation because while it’s great to know about animals that lived in the past if we don’t use that knowledge to protect the animals that we have today then what are we what’s the point really exactly right thank you that’s i agree with that thought process exactly because every fossil does tell a story some of them are tragedy some of them we will never know
that our caves have been preserving climatic history.
for thousands, millions of years. So it is literally there to be discovered. And we’d be crazy not to utilize literally here to hopefully improve the future and where we’re leading. Can I ask about Wellington Caves for anyone who’s not come across them? What do we know about the caves themselves? How have they actually come to exist? And then what’s being found here? Okay.
So Wellington Caves, technically from our discovery point of view from settlement, they’re…
The settlement have known of them since 1826, but I’d like to acknowledge that the Wiradjuri people and the Wiradjuri nation in which the Wellington Caves is situated, and in particular the Binjang people, which means, Binjang means beautiful valley, and that’s where Wellington actually sits. So their people and their ancestors have known for these caves long before settlement has discovered them in 1826.
⁓ Wellington Caves is part of the Garra Formation and we have two very distinct types of limestone that make up our caves. We have large massive limestone as well as the thinly bedded limestone embedded with over 300 different marine fossils present. Now this is early Devonian.
Yeah. So just a casual 400 million years ago. Just a little. And it’s the age of fishes. But incredibly from a fossil perspective, we have a huge assemblage of marine fossils, but not one single fish fossil. Yeah, that’s really interesting. as you say, marine fossils. So sea floor sediment from
the in from the inland sea or when the continent was forming yeah from the inland sea so now this is where we think about what we’re looking at today wellington in regional new south wales quite a long way from the ocean quite a way from the ocean we’re on that central west tablelands area incredibly flat wellington is quite undulating in the landscape thanks to some tectonic plates that have shifted
However, long ago, we can never actually tell you when, but with that shifting, buckling and the pressure of those anticlines creating the cavity underground, and our caves are slightly unusual to what most would think of when it comes to a cave being formed as that phreatic groundwater from underground dissolving limestone out.
When most people think of a cave and find Wellington slightly unusual, there is generally a landscape or a mountainside on top, keeping all of that moisture in and all of that water flowing down and dissolving it from the top down. Okay, so it’s actually quite a different geological process occurring there. Yeah, different for what most would think is common, but still a way caves are formed. So when you do come through Wellington Caves and in particular our Cathedral Cave, our
largest and our main show cave. It is filled with contours, lots of curves, all of these bell holes. And I do say to guests it might be my animal background. It reminds me a lot of elephant or rhino skin because it’s smooth and grey, yet slightly wrinkly all at the same time. And this is evidence that the water had filled the cave. And at different levels, you can almost imagine where water levels have risen and receded to leave us the cavities that we’re walking through.
Okay, and where’s the water coming from? Is it just underground aquifers? Is it coming from the river?
when you’re on the lowest level of the cave, we look down at the ground water table. This water table reflects what the Bell River is doing. So here at Wellington, we have the Bell River meet the Macquarie, otherwise known as the Wambool And both of those rivers meet in town, but less than one kilometer away from our caves, the Bell River bends through here. So when the Bell River
is full this is reflected inside our aquifers that you can see on the base level of Cathedral Cave.
Currently the water depth is only approximately 3.2 metres in depth. This well does peak at 5 metres and then once it goes above 5 metres it then starts to overflow and into the lowest level of the cave. Which it did in 2022. Did it do any damage at that time? What happened? Well the cave did have to close. The entire cave closed for approximately seven months because the lowest level of the cave, the water
exceeded my head height by the third flood. So December 21 was the first of three El Ninas the second around May and then the third around November. So the lowest level was out of action for almost three years. We were still doing tours to our second level where the features are and added a few other things in to compensate for that lowest level being closed. But then unfortunately with that water.
level rising it then started to affect the ground and the unevenness of the ground. So to then avoid trip hazards we then had to close the cave completely, wait for water, we recede and since then we’ve had to put in some flooring and some other
works yet to be completed. So quite porous rock then, the limestone that’s allowing that water to sort of easily flow back and forth with the river level. Correct and there’s no one particular cave that leads out directly to the water so it is making its way up. We’re aware of approximately 40 caves on the reserve. Yeah. There’s 150 hectares of crown land. Cathedral is the largest. Yeah. The entrance is
about 300 meters above sea level. And once you go to the bottom of the cave, you’re almost at river level, which is about 42 meters underground. Yeah. When you’re on standing on that area. Yeah. Wow. So, so there’s quite a lot of caves here, but visitors are allowed into usually into two, three of them. Is that right? Currently we’ve got two completely different tours open, one being Cathedral and the other being Gaden cave. Unfortunately, and quite sadly, cause it’s hard to choose a
favourite but I have a lot of love for our fossil and phosphate mine. The joys of working with nature and the environment. Unfortunately this tour now has been closed for over three years prior to the 2022 floods. We were in extremely hard drought and had three years without a single drop of rain.
Even though here we are looking at a past over millions of years in my time being affiliated with the caves in 10 years, I have seen a lot of change. Yeah. So drought to flood. Drought to flood three years without a single drop of rain. Nature, we have cracks open up.
then bring on a flood we have deluges coming in so we’ve had some subsidence yeah so unfortunately with the mine yes a lot of it was natural the caves were natural but then in world war one these caves were transformed into a mine and they were
excavating phosphate. Yeah. Phosphate, let’s loop all the way back to Macroderma koppa The phosphate was from the guano from the backdrop. Yeah. during World War I, 1914, the miners were blasting and digging through multiple areas and creating tunnels. So man-made works, nature coming into play, these were the areas that were most vulnerable during those extreme weather events where we’ve had significant changes.
fingers crossed it is our goal to reopen it. It is not only incredibly unique but it is wheelchair and accessible for everybody so we are really hoping that we can.
secure some grant funding and get this one reopened because it shows limestone, it shows the caves, it shows the history of the generations before us and how hard they worked for us. social history as well. To give us this life that we’ve got as well as Florida ceiling, breccia and mud sediment just couldn’t even
tell you how many thousands of bone fragments and teeth are still embedded in these walls. So we talked a bit about discovery by settlers of the caves and I think the story is that where I drew people said, don’t go into those caves. But once the settlers did go in, they found some really extraordinary megafauna fossils. And so this is where we start to get recognition that large
very large animals had roamed the Australian continent. In particular, Diprotodon you mentioned Wonambi We also had the Varanus lizards and various other creatures like that. And your favorite?
My favourite. Don’t tell the others. It is a really hard one. And it has changed over the years if I must admit. I used to say Diprotodon for somebody that worked with wombats as a live species for many years and have a few scars. Thankfully no scars from Diprotodon. Today, when Wonambi naracoortensis does win my place in my heart because when I was growing up in school in inner city Sydney,
I was brought up and taught a few First Nations stories about the Rainbow Serpent and this Dreamtime story of this large snake growing up as an adult.
learning a lot more being exposed to this incredible site Wonambi naracoortensis here is a large snake that actually genuinely represents these stories that we always it was highlighted as a story yeah but here we have the fossils and the facts
that it was a real snake that inhabited these areas. There’s a pretty febrile debate going on in Australian politics about the role of oral histories here. But when the oral history lines up with the fossil evidence, it’s fairly indisputable that First Nations people both encountered these animals and then lived alongside them.
I’ve been lucky enough to talk and listen with elders that make up the Binjang Clan and they have shared stories of their ancestors hunting megalania and the different methods that they use to take down these fierce ambush predators. And so you can certainly see the stories of Thylocoleo the so-called marsupial lion, the
the lizards and the snakes and diprotodon and all these bygone large sized animals of versions of which we have today or relatives of which we still have today except perhaps for the lion.
certainly, you know, appearing to in that oral tradition being creative spirits or being, you know, yeah, these, these, these kind of almost mythic creatures.
Given you can’t walk around and see them today, unless you find the fossils. One of the elders from the Bimjang mob have shared with me, as you mentioned earlier about being deterred from going into the caves. And they were brought up on Bugene, which was an evil spirit which inhabited the cave. And this is what they got told as a child. But as they grew up, they were taught that Bugene was actually a myth of an evil spirit to deter the children from
from
exploring You don’t want kids playing in caves. Exactly right. And then, you know, wonambi a giant snake in the cave, macrodermis and giant bats in the cave, maybe we have a few other species in there.
all for good reason. So we’ve got three different mobs that make up the Binjang Clan and elders from each mob all share different stories of connection to Wellington Caves. We know that there were, I could only imagine how diverse the landscape was on the surface with the plants as they were used for medicinal and foraging purposes as well and thankfully we do have Indigenous staff that work here that are more than comfortable
to work in the case because they know this evil spirit that they got taught as a child was a myth to deter them. Yeah, quite similar in many ways to the European fairy tales. Don’t wander off into the forest because this will happen to you. It’s a good way to keep the kids safe. Now, we’ve mentioned the Devonian and the Age of Fishes and
I guess one thing that people think about, a lot of people think about when they think through fossils obviously is dinosaurs and things. But we go from the Devonian here at Wellington.
and then skip the Mesozoic altogether and then we get animals from the Pleistocene and Pliocene eras. we get the more modern animals, the ones we’ve already mentioned. How did they end up in these caves? Excellent, and thanks to Flinders University that I’ve been in partnership with now since 2016 with their most current dig that we have on site.
Previously, we’ve had New South Wales Uni digging in the late 80s and early 90s. So to answer the question on how did they end up in the cave, the large majority of fossils that have been preserved in the cave are fragments of broken up fossil bones that have been washed.
into the cave. So in our current dig site we’re approximately five or six meters deep and in this particular dig site we’ve dug backwards through fossils that are fossil bones that are approximately 3 000 years old that have been washed in on the top layer. Then we have 10 to 15 000 year old bones that have been washed in. Then we have bones further down that have been fragments that have been washed in.
⁓ but now we are digging so far backwards in time that we are starting to find entire skeletons. So this might lead to what we suspect that where this
dig site is, even though it is an enclosed level of a cave, that most likely in the past there was a natural opening. Were animals walking along the top, not knowing there was an opening and a pitfall in front of them to succumb to their fate? Or potentially like some of the predators we have found in there, have they gone in for a feed and then succumb to their own fate down there? So I’m very grateful to the paleontologists, myself not a paleontologist, fossil enthusiast and being lucky to
volunteer with the digs and out at the wash bay. So I’m very grateful for the scientists that want to continue to study them and hopefully being able to answer some of these questions in the future. We haven’t even mentioned the giant birds that were here which are related to modern day emus and others. I was trying to think of the actual clade but yeah, emus will do. And giant kangaroos as well.
Yeah, the diversity of species here and I think it’s really important to have people like yourself who are
enthusiastic about the space to introduce visitors to it. So thank you. My one of my goals is if I like I said with enthusiasm and education, if we can encourage others to fall in love with the environment past or present, what we’re looking at does shape our future. Yeah. And thankfully being able to engage with so many guests as well as all of these school groups coming on through. Hopefully we can instill others to fall in love and protect the environment.
and conserve it as well. Absolutely.
Now for a visitor who might want to visit Wellington Caves, what would that experience be like? What do they get to see if they drive on up from Dubbo or from Sydney? So other than Christmas Day, we’re open every day of the year. Touch some wood where it’s present to say unless there is a natural disaster, are open every day of the year. We have an incredible interactive exhibit known as the Ancient Landscapes Gallery, which is a free exhibit within our visitor centre.
Here you can see diprotodon
to put it on, is it a cast? It’s a 3D printed replica. Okay. But you would not know it, it looks so incredible. So when you do come, you can enjoy this exhibit. There’s a 14 meter interactive screen where we can learn about some of our extinct species like Procoptodon goliah so the giant kangaroos. Exactly right. genyornis newtoni our big giant extinct bird species. Yeah. Thylacoleo carnifex
and Diprotodon opatum, he’s become our ambassador animal. The reason I say it, the Protodon’s become our ambassador was that in 1830, George Rankin, he was a local that settled in Bathurst and he was a magistrate. He wanted to explore the caves further than anyone had recorded exploring at this point. Today, this particular cave is known as Mitchell’s Cave. Whilst George was digging through this cave and exploring,
he found some incredibly large bone fragments that he knew were bigger than any species that he knew of alive in Australia. I can’t thank this man enough for his curiosity, because this is where Wellington really lands on the map scientifically, not just in Australia, but around the world. So George penned a letter to Thomas Mitchell, who was a colonial surveyor at the time. Thomas and George came back, dug out bones and sent them over to the renowned scientists of the time over in London.
Yeah, so it was Richard Owen, think, wasn’t it? so one of the most famous names in palaeontology got hold of these bones from the colonies, from the antipodes.
And suddenly, if not upended, at least dramatically expanded the scope of what they thought palaeontology was at the time. Exactly right. And think about a generation where we don’t have the technology like we have today and the communication. was only a short period earlier on the other side of the world that people were finding, dare I say the D word, dinosaurs for the first time. Cause here we are all about the megafauna and educating.
about the megafauna and as you linked into earlier I think most people think dinosaurs but Australia we have such an amazing collection of fossils. Wellington Caves we are the first site of megafauna discoveries we are not the only site today there is a lot of caves that also share findings similar so if they’re not first described here maybe a site like Naracoorte as wonambi naracoortensis lends its name to being first described down there.
But we’ve also found it up here. But thankfully for George and his curiosity, Thomas Mitchell sending them overseas. Now we know these large fossil bones have been determined to be Diprotodon, Then the Australian Museum joins us in digging in the late 1800s.
and we are still digging and still finding in 2023, the paleontologist from Flinders Uni publishing papers on species that were yet to be discovered on Earth. So I’m so excited with our dig site only approximately halfway through. What is there still I think one of our previous guests, Ellen Mather has published on some…
that were found here as well. yeah. Being reclassified now as Australia’s first vulture. Vulture, that’s the one. But no, no, but previously always considered an eagle or a different bird of prey. But so grateful for these scientists that also then come back and revisit and retest and look at studies that have already been done and thankfully with new tools and technology.
It’s incredible watching some of the datings change and different things. I think as part of the story of Australia, we often think about the big cities on the East Coast and the inland regions do get forgotten a bit. But actually when we go back to that period of European exploration and settlement,
these country towns, these areas, were so much a part of the history of the continent that nowadays we almost completely forget about, both in a cultural and scientific way.
I’m grateful for you, Travis, for coming and highlighting our site today and hopefully with this podcast, yeah, sharing what Australia has in its own backyard and New South Wales has in its own backyard. It is very unusual today where our cave is at almost practically the surface of a hillside and a very dry hillside.
Thanks to having a partnership with New South Wales Uni and Professor Andy Baker being a hydrologist that studied our caves now going into his 14th year learning about the geology of the landscape, the relationship of water it still has today and trying to imagine this landscape from years ago and all of these other soils and matters and different rocks that are no longer here.
We have evidence on the surface amongst the trees that there were other caves here because we’ve got the bases of stalagmites on the surface. They’ve all started to wear away. Now before we wrap up, we’ve got this wonderful artwork behind us. This is, as I understand it, we’re recording in a previous museum visitor space before the new, the current visitor space opened up. And this magnificent artwork displays some of those specimens we’ve talked about. So you’ve got your
You’ve lizards, you’ve got diprotodon over here. there was in the past in the Pleistocene era, there was the giant devil looking very much like today’s devil. And fun fact, in our dig site, the species that’s known as the Tasmanian devil today, as well as the thylacine commonly known as the Tassie tiger.
These two predators were prevalent on the mainland. dig site confirms these. we’ve got that there. Wonambi there’s one big big snake. Megalania up there. And Procoptodon, the short-faced, sthenurine kangaroos up the back.
Thylacoleo yes, once known as the marsupial lion and as I love to joke, probably our original drop bear. Yeah, yeah, that’s where the drop bear came from. Razor-sharp teeth, razor-sharp claws, blades for teeth and believed to have one of the strongest jaw pressures for a mammal of its size. An incredible creature, but.
Sort of glad I’ve only ever dug up a little bit of its teeth because… Not one you’d want to face. Not one you’d want Those blades for teeth. Just bone crunch. Yeah.
Look, Bec, this has been a lot of fun. I have had a chance to explore Cathedral Cave and I really encourage anyone who’s in the region to get out and do it or make a special trip out here to the central west and Orana region to check out Wellington Caves on Wiradjuri Country. Thank you so much. It’s been great. Thank you. It’s been pleasure.
Travis (40:03)
off the back of that interview, I just want to let you know that Alyssa and I have something really exciting coming up in Adelaide on the 29th of November 2025, if you happen to be listening to this late. So if you’re listening to it as it’s released, you should have plenty of time still to get there. We’re doing a live recording of fossils and fiction at Suburban Brew in Adelaide in Goodwood. It is going to be so much fun. Now,
The way this is going to work is Professor Flint or otherwise known as Michael Mills, who has been a previous guest on Fossils and Fiction, has his own podcast, PalaeoJam He will do a one-on-one guest interview for 30 minutes and then we’ll have a little bit of an intermission, a little bit of fun times and some surprises followed by Alyssa speaking with a panel of experts for our live recording of Fossils and Fiction. So Alyssa is going to host.
I will be there in the background hanging out and having fun as well. We will have two special guests. The first of those is Aidan Couzens who’s a mammal paleontologist from Flinders University, and Matt Herne who is a vertebrate paleontologist from the University of New England. So we’re going to talk about some of Australia’s weirdest fossils. A little bit more about Aidan. He is a paleontologist based at Flinders who investigates how marsupials and other mammals adapt to environmental change.
He’s particularly interested in understanding what causes animals on different continents to evolve in similar versus very different directions. So that will be a great conversation between Alyssa and Aidan. And then of course, we also have Matt Herne
And then of course we also have Matt Herne who is a vertebrate paleontologist as I mentioned from the University of New England. He has published on Iguanodontian fossils from the mid-cretaceous of Australia, other ornithopods in Australia as well. So he is a Mesozoic paleontologist, lots of excellent publications and it’s going to be very exciting and very interesting conversation. We are going to have a lot of fun. So remember to join us on November 29th.
at the Suburban Brew in Goodwood in Adelaide. I look forward to seeing you there and I’m sure Professor Flint and Alyssa will as well. We’d love it if you could pre-register for tickets, they’re free and you can do that via Eventbrite via the link in our show notes. That’s all we have time for on Fossils and Fiction this week. Please join us next time. Remember to rate and review the show, check out our merch store and support us. If you enjoy what we’re doing, that would be fantastic.
and we look forward to talking to you next time.
