Article copied directly from the ABC Science website. Written by Nicky Philips. Check out the original article here.

Banjo the Australovenator

 Palaeontologists have unveiled three new Australian dinosaur skeletons in outback Queensland today.

The two herbivores and one carnivore, excavated from the Winton formation, roamed our land during the Cretaceous period – 98 million years ago.

The research, published in the current edition of PloS One, puts Australian back on the palaeontology map and describes Australia’s fauna before it separated from the supercontinent Gondwana.

Palaeontologist and lead author Dr Scott Hocknull, of the Queensland Museum, says in the past dinosaur discoveries in Australia haven’t been considered important because there were so few of them.

“We’ve been able to prove that [view] completely wrong.”

Hocknull says all three skeletons are new genera of dinosaur, which show evolutionary links with dinosaurs from the northern hemisphere.

“Dinosaurs diversified and spread all over the world but Australia, being a very isolated place at the end of the world, developed its own unique fauna.”

Australia’s biggest meat eater

The new genera of carnivore, named Australovenator by the researchers, is the most complete meat-eating dinosaur skeleton ever found in Australia.

Hocknull says Australovenator, nicknamed Banjo, was the cheetah of its time.

“It was two metres from the hip, six metres long and built for speed,” he says.

The plant-eaters, Clancy and Matilda, were both titanosaur sauropods.

Hocknull says while Clancy was built like a hippo, Matilda was more like a giraffe.

“It was 16 metres high with a long neck and small head,” he says.

The skeletons of Matilda and Banjo were found together at the bottom of an ancient billabong.

Whatever killed Matilda probably killed Banjo, says Hocknull.

“Whether Banjo was trying to eat Matilda’s carcass or they both got stuck in the mud together we don’t really know.”

Hocknull says the dinosaurs were named after Australian poet Banjo Patterson and his characters.

“It’s kind of quirky that we have a national song about a man dying at the bottom of a billabong and we’ve got the same scenario playing out here 100 million years ago with a couple of dinosaurs,” he says.

Significant finding

Palaeontologist and Head of Sciences at Museum Victoria Dr John Long says Hocknull and his team’s paper is the most significant paper ever published on Australian dinosaurs to date.

“It not only presents us with two new amazing long-necked giants of the ancient Australian continent, but also announces our first really big predator – Australovenator,” says Long.

Hocknull says there are many more dinosaurs in the Winton site and they hope to find Australia’s oldest mammals among them.

“There are at least 50 other sites we know that are yet to be excavated so the next 20 to 30 years in Australian dinosaur science will be very exciting.”

Clancy, Matilda and Banjo are now part of an exhibition in the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum, which opens today in Winton.

Hocknull says the exhibition wouldn’t have got off the ground without the local community.

Thousands of volunteer hours have gone into prepping the bones so they can be studied and now available for the public, he says.