Top five Australian dinosaur discovery sites to explore

Okay, you can always watch the Jurassic Park movies, but kids and adults can also jump in the car and visit some of the sites around Australia where dinosaurs once roamed, and then left their fossilized remains. Here are five to choose from.

South Gippsland, east of Melbourne, was a very different place 110 million years ago. An encroaching ice age meant it was very cold, but the primal Gondwanan forests were home to real dinosaurs. These days, fossil hunters scour the rocky coast for bones, feathers, claws and teeth and you can join them. Usually over summer the Bunurong Environment Centre runs guided tours of the site that cater especially to youngsters who can learn some geology, check out a real dinosaur footprint, explore the caves and see a fossilized tree.

The Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum is the showcase of easily Australia’s biggest fossil site, up in central-north Queensland, and part of a 700km dinosaur trail. The museum in Winton is like a dinosaur theme park, both educational and entertaining (who knew we had our own Ozraptor, or Qantassaurus intrepidus?) and includes the fossil collection, a preparation laboratory and Dinosaur Canyon with models of some pretty fierce looking big lizards.

We all know fossils are animal or plant remains solidified into rock, but when that rock is actually a beautifully coloured opal things get really interesting. In Lightning Ridge, the Australian Opal Centre has a big collection of opalised fossils, including dinosaur bones, teeth and claws, mainly from the early Cretaceous period about 110 million years ago. Everything from frog, bird, mollusc and even crocodile fossils are also evident. Check out the collection, or over-18s can go a step further and join a six-day fossil dig.

So the fossils in this amazing cave aren’t actually dinosaurs, being “only” 200,000 years old, but the place where thousands of birds, reptiles and mammals (including unique Australian megafauna) have been collected needs to be seen to be believed. The cave, discovered in 1969 was a natural trap where animals fell to their unfortunate deaths over the millennia and you can join a tour to discover the site. Also check out the nearby Wonambi Fossil Centre with its fossil collection and reproductions of some amazing, but thankfully extinct, giant critters.

You’d be correct to think discovering one dinosaur footprint is significant, but what about thousands of them? That’s what you get on the rocky coastline near Broome, which about 130 million years ago was a sandy river delta criss-crossed by dinosaurs that left their prints. There’s even the world’s biggest footprint that’s 1.7 metres long embedded in rock! You can look for them yourself (try Gantheaume Point), so grab a map from the tourist info centre and start exploring.

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