Fieldwork at Alcoota, NT

Back in 1988, Palaeo Paul was a keen postgraduate student chasing the fossil crocodiles of Australia. While most of my field work was at the amazing Riversleigh Station in northwestern Queensland, we did here of crocodile fossils coming from the Alcoota site in the Northern Territory. 

At that time, this site was being worked by Peter Murray of the Northern Territory Museum. So my Bicentennial Project was to travel to Alcoota (three days on busses from Sydney to Townsville, across to the Northern Territory then south to Alice Springs) and two weeks digging in this Miocene mud.  

Alcoota is a tether deposit where a huge variety of birds, mammals and reptiles were gathered around a dwindling waterhole during a severe drought. It’s a frustrating site to work because you can only expose a small piece of bone before it needs to be hardened and left to dry before moving on to exposing the next piece. But it is magnificent country! A part of Australia most people will never see because they have no reason to go there.