Be Enquiring

When UNE’s Dr Phil Bell examined a collection of bones unearthed at Lighting Ridge, NSW he was stunned by the sheer number in the find.

“We initially assumed it was a single skeleton, but when I started looking at some of the bones, I realised that we had four scapulae (shoulder blades) all from different sized animals,” Dr Bell said.

It is the first dinosaur ‘herd’ to be discovered in Australia, among them a new dinosaur species and the world's most complete opalised dinosaur.

The new dinosaur has been named Fostoria dhimbangunmal in honour of opal miner Robert Foster, who discovered the fossils in the 1980s. The species name, dhimbangunmal (pronounced bim-baan goon-mal), means ‘sheep yard’ in the local Yuwaalaraay and Yuwaalayaay languages, in recognition of the Sheepyard locality where the bones were found.

“There are about 60 opalised bones from one adult dinosaur, including part of the braincase, and bones from at least another three animals,” said Dr Phil Bell.

The bones, which are mostly grey potch opal, were found in the 1980s by opal miner Robert Foster near Lightning Ridge. Scientists from the Australian Museum in Sydney helped excavate the fossils, but the bones remained unstudied until donated to the Australian Opal Centre by Robert's children in 2015.

Fostoria was a two-legged plant-eating iguanodontian dinosaur closely related to the famous Muttaburrasaurus from central Queensland, which was discovered in 1980.

The discovery comes on the back of the new small plant-eating dinosaur also from Lightning Ridge, Weewarrasaurus pobeni, which was named by Dr Bell and colleagues in 2018.

“The rate of discovery is astounding. On average, there’s at least one new dinosaur discovered around the world every week,” Dr Bell said. "With more paleontologists and scientists looking further afield than ever before, it’s an exciting time for dinosaur lovers everywhere, especially in Australia."