Dinosaur Dreaming, Inverloch
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In 1903, geologist William Hamilton Ferguson was mapping the rocky coastal outcrops a few kilometres west of Inverloch and uncovered the first dinosaur fossil ever discovered in Australia.
The Inverloch Dinosaur Dreaming dig site is Victoria's most productive dinosaur fossil site. From its discovery in 1991 to February 2013, some 15,000 bones, teeth and fossils have been found, dating back 126 million years.
Flat Rocks and The Caves areas are the main sites, all accessed from the Inverloch – Cape Patterson Road, only a few kilometres from Inverloch.
From the car park at The Caves, as you make your way down to the beach, you can read about the dinosaurs that once ruled this section of the earth on a series of interpretation boards at the base of the first series of steps.
From The Caves beach, you may be able to walk around cliffs to view the caves at low tide times.
As you step onto the beach at Flat Rocks, a nautical vista greets you. Depending on the state of the tide, long jetties or platforms of rock reach out into the sea. These are popular with children looking into shallow rock pools to see if any small marine life is marooned in them until the next high tide.
Looking across to the other side of Anderson's Inlet, you can see the distant wind farms on Bald Hills.
At the nearby RACV Resort, in the reception area is a display of dinosaur bone fragments and teeth, with descriptive notes and other information.
A feature of the display is a model of a Qantassaurus intrepidus. Qantassaurus intrepidus, named after the Australian airline Qantas, was a small ornithopod from Early Cretaceous of Victoria. The herbivorous Qantassaurus is known only for its unusually short, deep lower jaws with just ten cheekteeth. Qantassaurus was part of a diverse assemblage of small Australian ornithopods that might have been part of the Australian dinosaur fauna since the Jurassic.
You may not see dinosaurs wandering about, but your imagination will run wild.
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115462 - 2023-06-12 18:28:28