National Geographic was their major sponsor but now they're gonna pull out. What will become of the Inverloch fossil site then? Do we need foreign sponsors to pay for our own research anyway? Who gets the credit then - Aussies or an American company?

However, back in 1900 there was a near namesake to the enigmatic Captain Fergusson.

William Hamilton Ferguson lived and worked in Victoria in the late 19th to early 20th century. His claim to fame is that he discovered a remarkable object, a fossilised claw of a long dead dinosaur. And he made his discovery at Inverloch. Thus the story of Inverloch's dinosaurs & Australia's early mammals begins with Ferguson's Claw. Interested readers are referred to Danielle Shean's excellent short history in Dinosaur Dreaming 2003 Report.

Dinosaur Dreaming - world class science in action.

•  Electrolytic Fossil Extraction #1 (PDF, 350K) 
•  Electrolytic Fossil Extraction #2 (PDF, 100K) 

The bones and stones of Inverloch offer us a window into the deep past, back into the Mesozoic. Our remote ancestors, the mammals, then lived furtive lives in the shadow of fearsome dinosaurs. To trace the origin and evolution of mammals is important because it tells us about our own beginnings. It tells us too, that life is uncertain because our Earth is an ancient, accident prone rock suspended in the midst of immensity. But for the Alvarez event that ended the Mesozoic Age in a cataclysm, the dinosaurs might still rule the world. What of the human race and all its works then? 

To study the evolution of life on Earth is important too because Darwin's discovery of how the multitude of living things came to be is the most profound revelation that human thinking has experienced. Humankind has always felt a desire to answer deep questions about this world, ever since there has been human culture. We may treasure creation myths and fables as part of our cultural heritage. But if we would learn the real truth about the history of our world, it is to science that we turn.

Given the fact of evolution, might one expect the fossils to document a slow, incremental change from ancestral forms into descendants? This is not what the stones reveal. The discovery of an unbroken chain of ancestors changing gradually into descendants is a rare thing.  Indeed the fossil book is a record of of discontinuities, of seeming jumps (saltations) from one type of organism to another, different type. Why is this so? 

All his life Darwin held that the gaps in the story of life on Earth are due to the unimaginable incompleteness of the  fossil book. Only the tiniest, tiniest fraction of all the creatures that once lived and breathed are preserved in stone. The Earth's surface is geologically dynamic : tectonic plates are subducted and dissolved, strata are folded, compressed and metamorphosed, surface rocks are eroded and obliterated. Only a tiny percent of fossil bearing rocks are exposed at the surface anyway. Even the process of fossilisation is itself a rarity. 

However, against all odds, a very, very few, fossil lineages are surprisingly complete. One such lineage is the succession of creatures that begins with therapsid reptiles of the late Triassic and merges into the mammals of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Some members of the sequence are so intermediate between mammals and reptiles it seems arbitrary where to draw the line between mammal or reptile. These fossils indeed show us Evolution as it happened. Questers are referred to Ridley's standard work (M. Ridley, Evolution, 1993, Blackwell Scientific) for more info.

Science is like a gigantic jig saw puzzle : each piece may be small but, piece by patient piece, the big picture slowly reveals itself. For 10 years past the Inverloch dig has opened a window into the evolution of mammals during the Mesozoic Era.  It puts Australian science on an international stage. It deserves to be supported. 
 

Your intrepid camera girl had to beat a hasty retreat as this big'un surged in.

• About Dinosaur Dreaming
• William Hamilton Ferguson and The Claw