Plesiosaur Day, 18 November 2004 - Some notes on the meeting
From Colin McHenry
Plesiosaurs down under - a quick overview
This is just a list of current research that I'm aware of. Adam Morrell has given an account of his work elsewhere in this document - after so many years of confusion about what's going on with our elasmosaurs, I'm looking forward to him sorting things out. Chris Glen (UQ, currently in final stages of Ph.D. looking at hind limbs in birds) did a undergraduate project on a partial specimen of a smaller, 'Leptocleidus' grade animal from Queensland, and he's presently writing that up for publication. Ben Kear is producing a series of interesting finds through the South Australian Museum, and Troy Myers is about to commence a general study on the palaeoecology of the Australian marine reptile communities through James Cook University. I'm told that Tony Thulborn and Mary Wade are close to publishing their long awaited paper on the spectacular 'Richmond pliosaur' (an early polycotylid). Alex Cook at the Queensland Museum continues to dabble in the remarkable plesiosaur fossils under his care, and I'm writing up my thesis on Kronosaurus and hope to finish at the end of this year. I don't know what happened to Natalie Schroeder's work on 'Eric'.
Obviously, plesiosaur work in Australia is almost exclusively focused on the remarkable Early Cretaceous deposits of the Great Artesian Basin. Three dimensional preservation is commonplace in the nodular limestone of the Basin, and this provides insights into anatomical features that can be hard to interpret in the 'roadkill' specimens of the more famous Jurassic plesiosaurs from Europe. Set against this is the huge area to be covered (the Basin is one of the largest geological structures in the world), and the almost total lack of good exposure - the latter a result of our 'billiard table' topography and low rainfall. Still, plesiosaurology is inching forward, with a combination of new finds and careful examination of the museum collections. A key aspect to future collection is establishing good relationships with the rural communities of the Basin - these are the people who find most of the material, and we only get to study it if they feel like telling us about it. In exchange, we do what we can to help those communities benefit from 'fossil based' tourism.
As a window into the Early Cretaceous radiation of various plesiosaurs, I think the importance of the Australian material will become more widely appreciated as the current crop of descriptions are published. As Adam Morrell has suggested for the elasmosaurs, I think that the extent of general plesiosaur radiation during the Early Cretaceous has been underestimated by most authors, and I suppose the simple reason for this is that Early Cretaceous marine sediments are rare in Europe and North America - the anglophone literature thus far concentrates on the various Jurassic radiations and of course upon the Upper Cretaceous. It will be very interesting to see if the pattern we are seeing in the Australian Early Cretaceous plesiosaurs is paralleled in rocks of this age elsewhere in the world.
I am unable to offer any summary of plesiosaurology in Australia without mentioning the difficulties faced by its practitioners. Australia is currently a very unfriendly place for any kind of science - investment in the tertiary sector continues to decrease and science funding is at an all time low. The situation in palaeontology is even worse - vertebrate palaeontologists at universities and museums are retiring without being replaced, and whilst I don't know exactly how many vertebrate palaeontologists have permanent employment in research positions at universities and museums in the country overall, I guess the number would be five or less. There is currently no-one in the country who is both allowed to officially supervise a PhD on plesiosaurs and who is qualified to do it. In the current climate, those people of the above list who have recently gained employment and/or research grants in the field are to be heartily congratulated.
This year, CAVEPS (the Australian/NZ VP meeting) is in South Australia, and hopefully a few of us will be able to catch up over a beer. However, in general isolation is a big issue, both within Australia and between us and the rest of the world. If there are any plans to implement an email list or a web discussion board, I'm sure it would be a great help for us.