8 million years ago - the drying of Australia
About Alcoota
Alcoota Station is located 200km north-east of Alice Springs. The grass-covered plains form a thin veneer over an enormous bed of fossil bones that are around eight million years old. The bones are so abundant and tightly packed at Alcoota that it is sometimes difficult to excavate one bone without breaking the one below it.
Significant fossils at Alcoota
Thousands of fossilised bones and teeth of many different animals have been found at Alcoota. The animals include one of the largest birds that ever lived, the gigantic thunder bird Dromornis stirtoni, the wolf-sized Powerful Thylacine (Thylacinus potens) and the large leopard-sized Alcoota Marsupial Lion (Wakaleo alcootense).
Also found at Alcoota are fossils of herds of the wombat-like diprotodontoids Kolopsis torus and Plaisiodon centralis, the trunked Palorchestes painei, as well as kangaroos, crocodiles, bandicoots, possums and small birds.
Powerful Thylacine.
Copyright © A Musser.
Fossil-hunting at Alcoota
The bones at Alcoota are buried in soft sediments and are excavated using picks, awls and brushes. Most bones are hardened with special glues to prevent them from drying and crumbling as they are removed from the dirt. Very large or fragile bones need special attention - these are jacketed with plaster before transporting them back to the Alice Springs lab of the Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory for further preparation.
Fossil hunting at Alcoota.
