Ancient Animals of Victoria: Dinosaurs, Extinction, and Aboriginal Perspectives
Long before humans walked the Australian continent, Victoria was home to dinosaurs, giant amphibians, and marine reptiles that thrived during the Mesozoic era (c. 250–66 million years ago). Fossil discoveries in southern Victoria—particularly at Inverloch, Cape Otway, and the Otway Ranges—have revealed a unique ecosystem of polar dinosaurs adapted to long winter darkness. This article examines the science of Victoria’s dinosaur era, the event that caused their extinction around 66 million years ago, and how Aboriginal communities have interpreted ancient creatures in their cultural traditions. It also considers the evolutionary legacy of dinosaurs in Australia, including their survival as modern birds, and draws comparisons with other regions across the continent.
Dinosaurs in Victoria
During the Cretaceous period (c. 145–66 million years ago), Victoria was located much closer to the South Pole. At that time, Australia was still joined to Antarctica in the supercontinent Gondwana (Rich & Vickers-Rich 2000). The region was covered in cool temperate forests, and dinosaurs lived in near-polar conditions.
Fossils discovered at Dinosaur Cove (Cape Otway) and Flat Rocks (Inverloch) include:
Leaellynasaura amicagraphica – a small herbivorous dinosaur with unusually large eye sockets, thought to help it see in the long polar night.
Koolasuchus cleelandi – a giant amphibian (more than 4 metres long) that lived in rivers and is one of the latest surviving temnospondyl amphibians in the world.
Qantassaurus intrepidus – a small bipedal herbivore named after the airline Qantas, showing Australia’s continuing scientific interest in this heritage.
Theropod fossils (meat-eating dinosaurs), including relatives of raptors, indicate the presence of predators.
These finds make Victoria one of the world’s most important sites for studying polar dinosaurs (Rich & Rich 1989).
The extinction event
Around 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, dinosaurs (except birds) went extinct in a mass event known as the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction. The leading scientific explanation is that a massive asteroid, about 10 kilometres wide, struck the Yucatán Peninsula in present-day Mexico, creating the Chicxulub crater (Alvarez et al. 1980).
The impact released dust, sulphates, and firestorms that blocked sunlight, collapsed food chains, and altered the global climate. Up to 75 per cent of all species, including non-avian dinosaurs and many marine reptiles, were wiped out (Renne et al. 2013).
Survival and evolutionary legacy
Not all lineages vanished. Small feathered dinosaurs had already evolved into birds, which survived the extinction and remain the living descendants of dinosaurs (Chiappe 2009). Other ancient lineages, including crocodiles, turtles, and monotremes (egg-laying mammals like the platypus), also survived into the modern era.
In Australia, megafauna species such as diprotodons (giant wombat-like marsupials) evolved millions of years later, showing how ancient DNA and ecological niches continued to shape native fauna (Flannery 1994).
Aboriginal communities and ancient creatures
Although dinosaurs were extinct long before humans arrived in Australia (c. 65,000 years ago), many Aboriginal cultural stories feature giant ancestral animals, serpents, and bird-like beings that echo deep memories of ancient landscapes.
Rainbow Serpent stories in Victoria and across Australia describe immense serpentine beings shaping rivers and mountains—possibly inspired by fossil discoveries of giant reptiles in riverbeds.
In some communities, large bird-like ancestral beings may reflect cultural encounters with the fossilised remains of giant flightless birds, such as Genyornis, which survived into the Pleistocene (Miller et al. 1999).
Wadawurrung and other Victorian groups incorporated landforms shaped by volcanism and ancient seas into creation stories, linking Country to deep time.
These traditions do not describe dinosaurs directly but reveal Aboriginal peoples’ sophisticated ways of interpreting the deep history of Country.
Comparisons across Australia
Other parts of Australia also yield significant dinosaur fossils:
Queensland: Large sauropods such as Diamantinasaurus and Australovenator from Winton in central Queensland.
Western Australia: Tracks of giant sauropods preserved along the Kimberley coast, some of the largest dinosaur footprints in the world.
New South Wales: Lightning Ridge fossils include opalised dinosaur bones and marine reptiles.
Together with Victoria, these sites show the continent’s rich Mesozoic heritage.
Scientific significance and modern change
Victoria’s fossil record highlights how climate, continental drift, and catastrophic events shaped life. The K–Pg extinction demonstrates the fragility of ecosystems under rapid environmental stress—a lesson echoed in today’s biodiversity crisis and climate change. DNA and fossil evidence show continuity between extinct dinosaurs and living birds, bridging past and present in evolutionary science.
Conclusion
The pre-animal dinosaur era in Victoria reveals an extraordinary polar ecosystem of small herbivores, predators, and giant amphibians living under long winters. Their extinction around 66 million years ago, triggered by an asteroid impact, ended the age of dinosaurs but left evolutionary legacies in birds, reptiles, and monotremes. For Aboriginal communities, ancient fossils and landscapes became woven into cultural narratives of ancestral beings and creation, situating deep time within living Country. Victoria’s fossils not only enrich our understanding of Australia’s deep past but also remind us of the profound environmental changes that have always shaped life on Earth.
References
Alvarez, L. W., Alvarez, W., Asaro, F. and Michel, H. V. (1980) ‘Extraterrestrial cause for the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction’, Science, 208(4448), pp. 1095–1108.
Broome, R. (2005) Aboriginal Victorians: A History Since 1800. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Cahir, F. (2012) Black Gold: Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria, 1850–1870. Canberra: ANU E Press.
Chiappe, L. (2009) Glorified Dinosaurs: The Origin and Early Evolution of Birds. Sydney: UNSW Press.
Clark, I. (1990) Aboriginal Languages and Clans: An Historical Atlas of Western and Central Victoria, 1800–1900. Melbourne: Monash Publications in Geography.
Clark, I. (1995) Scars in the Landscape: A Register of Massacre Sites in Western Victoria 1803–1859. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Flannery, T. (1994) The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People. Sydney: New Holland.
Miller, G. H. et al. (1999) ‘Pleistocene extinction of Genyornis newtoni: human impact on Australian megafauna’, Science, 283(5399), pp. 205–208.
Renne, P. R. et al. (2013) ‘Time scales of critical events around the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary’, Science, 339(6120), pp. 684–687.
Rich, P. and Rich, T. (1989) Dinosaurs of Darkness. Melbourne: Penguin.
Rich, T. and Vickers-Rich, P. (2000) Dinosaurs of Australia and New Zealand. Sydney: UNSW Press.
Written, Researched and Directed by James Vegter 16/09/2025
Magic Lands Alliance
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Magic Lands Alliance acknowledge the Traditional Owners, Custodians, and First Nations communities across Australia and internationally. We honour their enduring connection to the sky, land, waters, language, and culture. We pay our respects to Elders past, present, and emerging, and to all First Peoples communities and language groups. This article draws only on publicly available information; many cultural practices remain the intellectual property of communities.