Scientists drilling for oil in Roma, Queensland discovered a 40 foot section of a dinosaur's spinal column. The dinosaur is believed to have been about 100 feet long and lived 100 million years ago in the Cretaceous period. A paleontologist identified the fossilized remains as belonging to a dinosaur. The discovery may be scientifically important like the 1924 discovery of immense dinosaur fossils in the same area, including a 50 foot long reptile weighing over 40 tons. Fossils of other prehistoric animals from the Jurassic and Cenozoic eras have also been found in Queensland, providing insights into life millions of years ago.

1. Townsville Daily Bulletin (Qld. : 1907 - 1954), Friday 4 November 1949, page 7
National Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article63082628
DINOSAUR
FOSSILS
(By CL.)
The recent discovery at Roma,
South-west Queensland, of a 40
foot section of a dinosaur's spinal
column by scientists engaged in
drilling for oil is of world-wide
scientific interest.
The Dinosaur, which lived in
the age when giant reptiles were
"lords of creation," is believed to
have been about 100 feet in length
and roamed the Cretaceous
marshes 100,000,000 years ago— or
thereabouts.
Miss Irene Crespin, a Common-
wealth Government palaeontolog-
ist, who is co-operating in the
search for oil
in the Roma dis-
trict, has identified the skeletal
section which is petrified and
clearly shows the vertebrae.
The Darling Downs district of
Queensland has become famous in
recent years for the discovery of
fossils of prehistoric animals and
reptiles.
It is possible that this latest dis-
covery may even excel in scien-
tific
importance the remarkable
find made by Mr. Arthur Browne
on the banks of a gully on Dur-
ham Downs, near Roma, in 1924,
when he came upon the remains
of an immense dinosaur. The
fossil bones, about 24 cwt. in all,
came from Jurassic deposits, one
of the oldest epochs in geological
time.
WORLD WIDE CURIOSITY
This discovery, the most im-
portant of its kind ever made in
Australia, excited world-wide
scientific curiousity. The name
Rhoetosaurus brownei was given
to the fossil remains by the then
director of the Queensland Mus-
eum, Mr. Heber Longman. They
were placed in the museum, and a
large-scale picture in oil on the
wall showed just what the enorm-
ous reptile looked like when alive.
It
weighed not less than 40 tons,
was at least 50 feet long, and
stood 20 feet high. Its
body was
as large as a medium-sized whale.
It had an elongated neck with a
small head and a lengthy, cylin-
drical tail.
Rhoetosaurus was a vegetarian
in
an age when maiden hair ferns  
grew as big and tall as pine trees
.... when South Queensland was
little more than a series of vast
swamps, and the sun blazed redly
through fogbound days of almost
incessant rain and moist, steamy
heat.
Footprints of another type of
dinosaur, which had three toes
and a duck
bill,
have been found
in the coal seams at Lanefield col-
liery in the Rosewood district of
South Queensland. These prints
were discovered by the then Gov-
ernment Geologist. Mr. L. C. Ball,
about fifteen years ago. The
centre toe was 22 inches long!
LACK OF BRAINS
Australia, geographically, is one
of the oldest of continents, if not
actually the oldest. The dinosaurs,
both flesh eating and vegetarian
types lived as an evolutionary
type for millions of
years. They
died, out literally, because they
did not have enough brains. A
dinosaur had less than half an
ounce of brain for every ton of
its weight. Its cranial capacity,
relatively, was not much bigger
than a hen's egg. It was unable
to adapt itself to the changes in
temperature and climate and the
gradual decrease in rainfall, so
This was just as well, because
if you went hunting dinosaur you
would need a battery of twenty-
five pounders. An elephant gun
would have been about as
five pounders. An elephant gun
would have been just about as
useless as a boy's catapult.
Varieties
of
fossil marsupials,
 
much later in geological time than
the dinosaurs, have also been dis-
covered on the Darling Downs. A
bizarre marsupial type from the
Cainozoic era— a period so close
to our own time in geological his-
tory that it
seems only the day
before yesterday —
was found at a
depth of 70 feet when a man was
sinking a well in 1921 at Brigalow.
It was the most grotesque marsu-
pial known, and has a unique place
among animals, both living and ex-
tinct.
The skull yas two feet in length,
but the width of the face, with
enormous cheek pouches, found to-
day in much less exaggerated
form in the wombat and the na-
tive bear, was even wider. Eury-
zygoma, as this
queer marsupial
was called, resembled a giant
wombat in the general shape of
its body and limbs.