Summary:
Robert Jones talks about the Dinosaur exhibition and the importance of fossils from Gondwana.
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Helen Thompson: We're here today in the Australian Museum in the exciting new Dinosaur Exhibition. With us today, we have Robert Jones. Hi Robert.
Robert Jones: Hello.
Helen: Would you be able to tell us how this exhibition came to be?
Robert: Well the museum realised it wanted something to excite people and to bring in the crowds and dinosaurs are one thing that does that, so we put together a new and exciting dinosaur exhibition.
We think we're been successful in attracting the crowds in to have a look at dinosaurs.
Helen: I think you have too. Would you be able tell us about these three dinosaurs here?
Robert: Behind us are these dinosaurs. Two of them are obviously the same and the third one, as you can see, is smaller and different.
The two large ones are called theropods. They are carnivorous, two-legged dinosaurs. The small one is an ornithopod, again two legged but it was actually herbivorous; it ate plants.
Helen: These dinosaurs are from Gondwana. Can you tell us a bit about Gondwana?
Robert: Gondwana was the large southern supercontinent, made up of what we now have: the continents of Africa, Australia, South America, India and Antarctica. It was before they all drifted apart.
Now they had animals living on them that have left their fossils on those supercontinents and they are now a long way apart.
So we can find those fossils and realise the connection between the continents that made up Gondwana.
Helen: Is there anything special about the fossils from Gondwana?
Robert: A lot of the fossils of Gondwana are what we call endemic to Gondwana. That means that they are only found on Gondwanan continents and not the Northern Hemisphere continents.
So you will find similar fossils in Australia, South American, Africa and Antarctica.
There is one fossil leaf of a plant called Glossopteris which is found on all these continents now, because these continents one time were together and these all lived a lot closer together then.