Museum Victoria and Monash University have conducted “Dinosaur Dreaming” digs since 1995. Originally at the Flat Rocks site outside Inverloch, Victoria, it has evolved to include localities along the Bass and Otway Coasts. Since 2008 this blog has shared images and stories of crew taking part in excavations, fossil bones recovered, and fossilly things we get up to between digs. The most recent dig took place at Twin Reefs for 3 weeks in February 2025.
Saturday, 17 August 2013
Maxillae
Remember the ornithopod jaws that Mary and Sharyn found at Eric the Red West this year? Dave has let slip that these are actually maxillae (that is, upper teeth rows not lower). As Dr Tom Rich keeps telling us, because they are a weaker bone, maxillae are a lot rarer than mandibles (lower jaws) - in fact, it is not unusual to find 20 mandibles preserved for every maxilla. So once again, our Eric the Red West site has yielded the unexpected.
Another update - Mary's is indeed a maxilla but Dave has confirmed that Sharyn's tiny one is a mandible (it was just fooling him for a little while).
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