Large dinosaur bones found in Queensland, Australia

A graveyard of large dinosaur bones has been discovered in outback Queensland. The Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum's palaeontologists uncovered the fossils during a dig near Winton, in central west Queensland.

Palaeontologist Stephen Poropat directs Milton Gosley and Harry Elliott
excavate a large sauropod tibia [Credit: AAOD]

Field palaeontologist David Elliott said he's not seen this many large dinosaur bones in one area for a decade.

"Most digs involve a lot of digging in search of the bone deposit but that wasn't the case with this one," Elliott said.

"As fast as we tried to dig around one bone, we uncovered another - there were bones everywhere - giant limbs, vertebrae and two meter long ribs stacked across each other and joined together by rocky concretions."

Trish Sloan and Carl Webster piece together a small femur found as surface fragments
in the first week of the dig [Credit: AAOD]

The museum's research associate Dr Stephen Poropat says the discovery will go a long way towards filling in the gaps of knowledge of Winton's ancient giants.

"These bones belong to a huge animal that is up there with some of Australia's largest dinosaurs," Poropat said.

"The really exciting thing about this site is the number of bones we have found of the same animal. We suspect that it could be Wintonotitan but as very few complete bones of Wintonotitan have been found, we will need to wait until the bones have been prepared before we are sure."

He said it could be a completely new species too.