Dingo K9-4 unearths dinosaurs!

Dingo Mini Digger's K9-4 has been digging around in outback Queensland as the main workhorse on a paleontological dig and has unearthed more than just dirt.

The Dingo has been used as a general tool on dinosaur dig sites in Western Queensland, by a cooperative team including the Queensland Museum, Australian Age of Dinosaurs (a Winton Based Group), the University of Queensland, and participants from all over Australia and elsewhere. The dig team core consists of Dr Alex Cook, QM, Scott Hocknull QM David Elliott, local grazier, Dr Steve Salisbury, UQ, Technical officers Joanne Wilkinson, Deb Lewis and Kerry Gedus.

The Dingo K9-4 worked two sites last year to remove overburden (overlaying sediments) close to dinosaur bones.

According to Dr Cook the Museum had been looking for a small unit to use on the digs and contacted Dingo Mini Diggers.

"We were anxious to try some of the many attachments to develop differing excavation techniques around the bones." Dr Cook said.

"The machine was mostly used with the hydraulic bucket, which allowed us to get in and make inroads into the degraded siltstones, which surrounded the dinosaur bone deposit. We also used the Dingo to move the mounds of material excavated by hand when working with the bones."

"The Dingo was used to ferry the bones, which had been encased in plaster jackets for transport, out of the dig site and onto the vehicles. The versatility of the Dingo came to the fore during the dig and was used on all sorts of uneven surfaces and through many grades of material from black soil to degraded rock," Dr Cook said.

"The K9-4 certainly had the grunt and the stamina to keep working during the month long excavations. As the main workhorse on the large dig, it proved the most invaluable tool of all," he said.

"The two sites we are investigating are on the same property 80km NE of Winton, WQ. They are about 3km apart and both have got bones on the surface. The first site is the Elliot site, which we have been working on for 3 years," Dr Cook said.

"The second site we call Overshot site and is a new site. The main aim of the 2003 excavation was to find more of Elliot but also to confirm the existence of a second animal on the site, which we have nicknamed Mary. Both of these dinosaurs are sauropods, and while Mary was only small in comparison, it was still in the range of 10-15 metres long.

Interesting items were found during this excavation including remains of small crocodiles, turtles and fishes. These were sieved from the sediments from around the bones.

It is clear now the Elliot site contains a large number of bones, with over 59 separate bones recovered. The deposit is a bone bed, where the remains of multiple (we don't know how many) have been scattered. We are following the line of bones as it dips deeper under the surface, and we are now down 2.9 metres, having removed over 600 cubic metres of material.

During 2004 we will be concentrating entirely on the Elliot site, with four weeks (two weeks in June and Sept) digging along the bone bed and trying to follow the line of large bones.

The second sited at Overshot had about a dozen smaller bones from different types of dinosaurs on the surface, including small pieces of sauropod dinosaur, possible ornithopod dinosaur and a bone of another dinosaur, of which we are unsure.

During the excavation only six large bones were found, but the work done by the Dingo digging around these bones resulted in some fantastic new finds coming out of the sieving. The first two claws from a small dinosaur were found and these are the first of their kind from Queensland, as well as a dinosaur tooth, and numerous scutes and teeth from crocodiles. The new site has only been dug to 1 metre depth, (it also dips into the subsurface) so a lot more work will happen on this site sometime on the future."

The other dinosaurs were found in a similar way and there are now many sites known in the district. There is at least a decades work around Winton," Dr Cook said.