Summary:
Why did you become a palaeontologist?
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Music
Robert: Welcome and thanks for coming here this morning. Are there any questions you would like to ask me?
Student: What led to your career in palaeontology?
Robert: As a youngster I had an interest in geology and rocks and minerals and I had a rock collection and I knew that I wanted to pursue a career in geology.
Palaeontology is actually a part of geology so I studied geology at university and there at university I became interested in fossils.
So I then decided to concentrate on fossils and studied the palaeontology and the other subjects associated with palaeontology
and ultimately I was able to obtain a job here at the museum where I have been ever since.
Student: To what exotic places has palaeontology taken you?
Robert: I don't know if you would call them all that exotic but I've been to lots of interesting places. I've been quite a lot of places around Australia and I've been to Lord Howe Island and Canada, and Japan.
I wouldn't necessarily call them all that exotic but they are quite interesting, especially the remote places in Australia collecting fossils.
Student: Have you found anything interesting this year?
Robert: No, I don't think I found anything interesting this year but we have finished off, because I was working on, I finished off the new dinosaur gallery which opened in March.
So that's an interesting thing to go and see, so I recommend you go and have a look.
Summary:
Where are fossils found?
Why are dinosaurs so big?
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Student: Where are fossils usually found?
Robert: Fossils are found in sedimentary rocks. Those are rocks that are actually derived from mud and sandstone and such things.
You won't find fossils in igneous rocks like granites or in basalts or metamorphic rocks, generally not in metamorphic rocks. So sedimentary rocks you need to find to look for fossils in.
Student: Why were dinosaurs so big?
Robert: Well, the first thing to say is that not all dinosaurs were big but some were big. Yes, they became big, obviously there is an advantage in being big.
Sometimes it's an advantage in being big and have sort of a large stomach when you're eating foods that are very low nutrient quality so they grew to be big.
Now they might have also grown big to try and get large to outcompete other dinosaurs that maybe wanted to attack them.
Like an elephant doesn't have to worry about being attacked by lions because they are so big. There are advantages in being big, so it's these advantages that usually mean why it grows big.
They are the reasons behind it, there must be some advantage.
Summary:
What becomes fossils?
Where are fossils found?
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Student: What type of things become fossils?
Robert: It's usually hard parts of animals and plants that become fossils so you get the shells or the bones and sometimes things like wood or the more robust tissues of plants.
You can get soft parts of animals and plants preserved but it's a lot, lot rarer, but it's known to occur.
Student: Where are most of Australia's dinosaurs found?
Robert: Up to now most dinosaurs in Australia have been found in the eastern side of Australia, particularly in central and northern Queensland,
northern New South Wales and on the southern coast of Victoria. Dinosaurs are known from other places but this is where most of them have been found.
Summary:
Where are Australian fossils found?
How smart were dinosaurs?
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Student: Does Australia have a lot of dinosaur fossils?
Robert: Well, not all that many fossils. The reasons why we don't have so many dinosaurs I suppose is partly because we haven't got so many people out there looking for them.
And we haven't had a lot of people been putting a lot of money and effort into finding them. But as time goes on more and more are being found.
So just keep your eyes and ears open and you'll find more and more dinosaurs are being discovered in Australia.
Student: How smart were dinosaurs?
Robert: How smart were they? Well, they were pretty smart, I suppose, to be able to survive for all the time dinosaurs did.
Dinosaurs were around, that's the group, dinosaurs were around for about 150 million years and it was a pretty dramatic event that wiped them out.
If it wasn't for whatever killed them at the end of the Cretaceous, I doubt whether the mammals would have taken over and ...
we probably still would have had dinosaurs around today, apart from birds, which are around today.
Summary:
How did dinosaurs become extinct?
Why did the mammals survive?
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Student: How did dinosaurs become extinct?
Robert: Well, it became known that they became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous, that was about 65 million years ago.
Now the reason they became extinct is a bit debated and it's probably a variety of reasons or a combination of reasons really.
At that time, at the end of the Cretaceous, there was a lot of volcanism going on in different parts of the globe, throwing up a lot of ash and gases into the atmosphere.
As well they have evidence for a very large meteor impact at the end of the Cretaceous. Again, it would have thrown a lot of debris into the atmosphere.
This would have blocked out the sun for quite a long while which would have inhibited growth of plants, which in turn would inhibit the growth of the food of the herbivorous dinosaurs
which could have aided the dying off of the carnivorous dinosaurs because basically the food chain is interrupted.
So at the end of the Cretaceous Period, coupled with possibly fires and things like that, caused by the impact too.
So there are some actual events at the end of the Cretaceous Period that caused the death of the dinosaurs.
Now the extinction of dinosaurs is still being debated about the timing and a whole a lot of things are involved in this.
Student: How would the mammals have survived that?
Robert: Mammals at that time were quite small. They were able to hide in places, in holes, in the ground, under logs, which probably allowed them to survive the initial harsh conditions.
And they were able to then go out and forage and scavenge and were able to survive, whereas the dinosaurs themselves became extinct. Lots of other creatures survived the end of the Cretaceous event as well.
And the birds that evolved from a group of dinosaurs, came through as well. Very hotly debated as to why certain things survived and why certain things didn't.
Student: Where do you get the funding for your expeditions in palaeontology?
Robert: The funding for us as palaeontologists comes from a varying of sources. Working in the museum, the state government is basically the people that support the museum.
But funding can come from grants from Commonwealth granting agencies like the Australian Research Council, and they are the main places: grants and funding from the museum.
Summary:
How did dinosaurs survive the polar winter?
Did these dinosaurs hibernate?
Why is it important to study fossils?
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Student: I heard some dinosaurs lived in the dark of polar winter. Is that true? And do you think dinosaurs hibernated?
Robert: That's correct. Dinosaurs have been found in southern Victoria.
At the time when they lived, that part of southern Victoria was actually above the Antarctic Circle,
therefore it would have had some time throughout the year of complete twenty-four-hour darkness.
You know that depends where you are in that continuum between the Antarctic Circle and the pole, how long you had.
But still they went through periods of total darkness for some time.
Now, the evidence they have that they stayed there in total darkness I suppose are things like one of the dinosaurs has got very large eyes and very large what they call optic lobes of the brain.
So, that means that it was adapted for seeing in low light conditions.
So, therefore it probably did stay in those polar night-time conditions of darkness.
They could have hibernated, yes, it's harder to tell if they did hibernate or they could have migrated, but small dinosaurs, you don't expect them to migrate
and this was a small dinosaur we're talking about that had these large eyes.
Yet they could have hibernated, I'm not too certain what the evidence for the hibernation is but the things like the fact that they were actually found above what was the Antarctic Circle
and had large eyes indicates that maybe they did hibernate.
Student: Why is it so important to study fossils?
Robert: Well, fossils allow you to find out what has happened in the past and you can see how animals have evolved, animals and plants have evolved in the past, and see where we've come from,
and also by studying what's happened in the past and fossils allow you to see what's happened in the past you might be able to work out what might happen in the future.
So, it's important to know what happened in the past for, you know, climate change that we're going through now.
It's happened in the past before so if we study it we can see what has actually taken place and give us some indication of what we might expect and how we might go around sort of adapting to this.