Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 9
The Great Cretaceous Walk
Because of the sparse and uneven record of dinosaurs in Australia, their
fossil footprints are more valuable here than anywhere else on Earth.
—Thomas H. Rich and Patricia Vickers-Rich,
A Century of Australian Dinosaurs
(2003)
Looking for Traces in All the Wrong Places
Dinosaurtracksarehardtofind.Thishumblingrealizationstruckmeduringthethird
week of a month-long excursion in May-June 2010, while doing field work along
the craggy coast of Victoria, Australia. Just the year before, paleontologist Tom Rich
of Museum Victoria invited me to look for trace fossils made by dinosaurs and other
Cretaceous animals that might be preserved in the rocks of Victoria. Yet as was of-
ten the case with looking for fossils of any kind, there was no guarantee of success.
Duringourtimeinthefield,heandIhadalreadysearchedmorethanahundredkilo-
meters ofcoastal cliffsand marine platforms east ofourpresent location, with only a
few fossil finds in all of its vastness. Now we were working our way through sites to
the west, and so far nothing else had been found worth writing home about.
So a bit of stubbornness underpinned our visit to Milanesia Beach, located in
southwestern Victoria, Australia. Milanesia Beach is about a three-hour drive from
thebigcityofMelbourne,butlikemanyplacesinAustraliaitfeelsisolated,faraway
in space and time from a world where people sip lattes, use mobile devices, or drive
cars, sometimes all simultaneously. A testament to its relative inaccessibility is that,
despite its having a beautiful beach framed by dramatic sea cliffs, the people who
normally see it are not swimmers, surfers, or sunbathers, but hikers. Even then, it is
only a brief waypoint for those people as they otherwise enjoy the gorgeous scenery
