Oral Presentation Annual Meetings of the Endocrine Society of Australia and Society for Reproductive Biology and Australia and New Zealand Bone and Mineral Society 2016

Walking with dinosaurs in the digital age (#218)

Steve Salisbury 1
  1. School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD

Fossilised tracks offer an unprecedented view into to life of extinct animals.  Unlike fossilised bones, tracks provide direct evidence for what animals were doing, where they did it and how abundant they were.  Rapidly developing digital technologies and new approaches to remote sensing are now allowing us to view and understand fossilised tracks in ways only dreamed of less than a decade ago.  In the remote West Kimberley region of Western Australia, a combination of aerial and ground-based laser-scanning and 3D photography is allowing us to reconstruct 130 million year old landscapes that were once populated by literally thousands of dinosaurs, offering a window on a world that is normally shrouded in the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean. In central-western Queensland, 3D digital reconstructions of thousands of dinosaur tracks at Lark Quarry Conservation Park, south of Winton, are challenging the traditional interpretation of the site as a dinosaur ‘stampede’.  While the quest for ancient DNA preserved in amber continues in the movies, the new world of 3D digital modelling offers a new and exciting way to immerse ourselves in a world that was walked by dinosaurs.