Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
traliawiththeexceptionofafewisolatedbonesinVictoria.Nearlyallthatisknown
about big Cretaceous theropods of this entire continent comes from their tracks,
which Thulborn and others described from Western Australia in the 1990s, and a
few that I and others found in Victoria in 2007-2008.
When Australian paleontologists Tony Thulborn and Mary Wade proposed the
“dinosaur stampede provoked by a large stalking theropod” idea in 1979, this was
nine years before the publication of Moratalla and his colleagues' study and thirty
years before the world learned about
Australovenator
. So Thulborn and Wade can't
be faulted for what they didn't yet know, and they were using the best science
known then to interpret the tracks. Also, like I said before (and it bears repeating),
they did fantastic work. I consider their 1979 paper a classic in dinosaur ichnology,
which they also followed up in 1984 with a considerably more detailed 105-page
report.
Nonetheless, it's certainly possible they made a mistake in identifying the
maker of the large three-toed tracks. At the time, they tentatively identified these
on the basis of their resemblance to large theropod tracks known elsewhere, which
had been allied with tyrannosaur-like tracemakers. Interestingly, objections to this
identification,voicedformallybyRomilioandSalisbury,werenotnew,asafewdi-
nosaur paleontologists questioned it soon after Thulborn and Wade's second article
came out in 1984. Romilio and Salisbury were just the first to rigorously test the
original hypothesis using statistical methods as opposed to just the scientific equi-
valent of name-calling.
Backtracking the Walking Dead
So the hypothesis is dead; long live the new hypothesis! This means the popular
story of Lark Quarry needs to be revised, and the tour guides there must alter their
spielsoratleastpresent“bothsides”oftheargument.Furthermore,the
Gallimimus
-
panicked-by-
Tyrannosaurus
scene in the movie
Jurassic Park
needs to be redone
with an alternate version, showing the
Gallimimus
running for some other, unspeci-
fied reason. And, without a doubt, a stage play is absolutely necessary: to do any-
