This beautifully illustrated book, recently published by the Queensland Museum, looks at life and major geological events in Queensland over the past 250 million years.
The oldest record of dinosaurs in Australia are footprints of theropod (carnivorous) dinosaurs discovered in a coal mine at Ipswich during the 1950s which are believed to be 215 million years old from the late Triassic period.
A 200 million year old spider fossil from the Triassic Period was recently discovered in shale deposits from Dinmore. This represents the first fossil mygalomorph spider ever described from Australia.
Many of the insects that lived in the Triassic forests are easy to recognise and could be compared with insects found today. The most important and diverse Triassic fossil insects have been collected from the Esk formation at Mount Crosby and the Ipswich coal measures.
The Redbank Plains Formation which is part of the Booval Basin is thought to be Paleogene in age and many of the earliest known Cenozoic fossils found here include fish, lungfish, turtles and a bird foot.
So if you want to find out the latest information about fascinating fossils from the Ipswich area, be sure to have a look at this book which is held at Ipswich Libraries.
You may also be interested in reading a blog article posted on Nov 14, 2012 Historic Fossil Sites in and around Ipswich which is based on information taken from the book Australia’s Fossil Heritage which is also held at Ipswich Libraries.
Information taken from “In Search of Ancient Queensland: a Queensland Museum Guide” by Alex Gordon Cook & Andrew C. Rozefelds.