{"id":13928,"date":"2018-10-13T11:05:19","date_gmt":"2018-10-13T11:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/?p=13928"},"modified":"2018-10-13T11:46:50","modified_gmt":"2018-10-13T11:46:50","slug":"romeo-and-juliet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/?p=13928","title":{"rendered":"romeo and juliet."},"content":{"rendered":"

it’s a true australian outback story and it does have a really tragic ending, too. the only thing i’ve been a bit ‘creative’ with are the names: they were actually called banjo and matilda. but it’s as true a love story as you could possibly get with dinosaurs (‘darling, i could eat you up …’).<\/p>\n

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let’s start at the beginning. a long, long time ago, approximately 95 million years ago, a sauropod (diamantinasaurus matildae) was quietly going about her business which mainly consisted of decimating the local flora. scientists think the conifers were particularly tasty that time of year.<\/p>\n

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unfortunately, while munching on her favourite trees, matilda ventured a bit too close to the local waterhole and got stuck in the mud. being a bit on the curvy side, at about 20 tons, and rather not over-endowed in the brains department she started to wriggle around but that made things worse rather than better – she was properly trapped in the mud, which pretty much sealed her fate.<\/p>\n

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along came banjo, a feisty little theropod (australovenator wintonensis). since he felt a bit peckish, too, and never really passed up on a easy meal he thought he’d give matilda a bit of a nibble. while matilda’s fate was ultimately sealed she disagreed violently and rejected banjo’s advances with a fell swipe of her tail. or so goes the story: since we don’t have records of exactly what went down 95 million years ago chances are this is not at all how it happened but who can resist a bit of crime fiction.<\/p>\n

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this is what they think it may have looked like. actually it’s not too far fetched; the bones of matilda and banjo were indeed found together, which gave rise to the whole story about how they may have both died at the same time.<\/p>\n

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banjo was by no means a massive theropod like, say a t-rex, or the even more sinister kronosaurus<\/a>. still, you would not want to meet him alone in a dark ally.<\/p>\n

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the photo above actually relates to the dino stampede which we will write about at a later date. however, it appears one of banjo’s relatives may have played an important part in that, too.<\/p>\n

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fast forward to the year of 1999 and a local farmer by the name of david elliott was just busy mustering sheep when he saw something sticking out of the ground. as it would turn out he had just discovered the bones of a sauropod. mr elliott continued to muster sheep and discover dino bones (actually he is still very much involved in both of those fascinating activities) but his greatest discovery (so far) was when in 2005 he discovered the hitherto most complete skeletons of matilda and banjo.<\/p>\n

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those bones can now be seen in the ‘australian age of dinosaurs<\/a>‘ museum just outside of winton, the town that also gave the world andrew barton ‘banjo’ paterson who in turn gave the world the famous poem ‘waltzing matilda’. the museum holds many more bones from the annual digs around winton.<\/p>\n

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the reason why so many fossils turn up here is that the area used to be a vast floodplain when the eromanga sea, which covered large parts of queensland and stretched into south australia, retreated. from there the fossils got covered up and then of course the surface got weathered away again.<\/p>\n

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the jump-up where the museum is situated is covered by harder rock that is more resistant to erosion than the surrounding areas where all the fossils turn up: a perfect spot to house the finds.<\/p>\n

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today the museum holds the original bones of these amazing finds. the foundation also invites volunteers to help with an annual dig and for those who don’t live too far away, an opportunity to help with the preparation of the fossils. who could resist either opportunity …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

it’s a true australian outback story and it does have a really tragic ending, too. the only thing i’ve been a bit ‘creative’ with are the names: they were actually called banjo and matilda. but it’s as true a love story as you could possibly get with dinosaurs (‘darling, i could eat you up …’).… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-our-blog","category-the-long-way-round"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/oz_trip_108-1-6.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7MvER-3CE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13928"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13984,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13928\/revisions\/13984"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}