Eromanga Natural History Museum honours two mothers with dinosaur naming

In a tribute to two women with the same name, the Eromanga Natural History Museum in Outback Queensland has announced an early Mother’s Day gift this week by naming a sauropod dinosaur that was unearthed during a dig last year JoJo.

The Museum’s newly named JoJo is more than just a window to the dinosaurs who once roamed the Eromanga region, but also recognises the critical work of Jo Pegler and Joanne Wilkinson - who play integral roles in the ongoing success of the museum.

Wilkinson, a founding supporter and educator, and Pegler who is Laboratory Manager and a founding staff member at the museum, have been part of the fabric of this remote outpost of palaeontology since its inception 20 years ago.   

Museum co-founder and Director Robyn Mackenzie notes “Sauropods typically abandoned their young. So while our JoJo may have been a neglectful mother millions of years ago, we’re using her to celebrate two women who are not only fabulous mums, but are also key to the work we do at the museum.”

It’s a rare moment of pause for Mackenzie herself this Mother’s Day. Each year, she and her team are usually deep in the outback on a fossil dig on Mother’s Day - work that began when her son discovered a dinosaur bone on their property, sparking a legacy that would become the Eromanga Natural History Museum. This year however the May dinosaur dig has been delayed by recent devastating floods that inundated the region.

In addition to delaying the annual May dig, the recent floods have wiped out 85% of visitor bookings for the Eromanga Natural History Museum - a heavy blow for the not-for-profit institution that relies on tourism and community support.

In true outback spirit, the team is undeterred with Mackenzie sharing “we’ve weathered a lot out here. And it’s the community - especially the women, the mothers – who help us hold everything together. JoJo the dinosaur is our way of honouring that resilience and love.”

The Eromanga Natural History Museum is now calling on Australians to support the recovery of the region by planning a visit, spreading the word or donating to help preserve its remarkable work.

Mackenzie added “the landscape is looking beautiful, we’re dry and all roads to Quilpie Shire and Eromanga are now open.  There’s so much to see and do out here that I hope tourists will support us by planning trips out to us.

“We have a strong collection of prehistoric marine fossils from our south west Queensland region, due to our history as an inland sea.  I’m hopeful the recent rains and floods may have helped unearth a treasure trove of fossils awaiting discovery when we can get back out and dig later this month.”

Eromanga is currently the furthest town from the sea in Australia, but 90 million years ago, it was in the middle of the Eromanga inland sea – with the recent floods creating an inland island of the Museum, which thankfully remained just out of waters reach. 

For more information or to donate, visit www.enhm.com.au

Image top. Jo Pegler with JoJo’s bones; image centre. the dig site for JoJo the sauropod dinosaur; image below. Robyn Mackenzie and Jo Pegler in a replica small scale sauropod nest. Credit: Steve Young photographer.

More information on The Eromanga Natural History Museum

The Eromanga dinosaur fossil fields, discovered in 2004 in the Lake Eyre Basin, Queensland, are of international significance. The Eromanga Natural History Museum was established the same year and now houses Australia’s largest collection of dinosaur and megafauna fossils held in a collection in their region of discovery. The museum’s collection includes Australotitan cooperensis (“Cooper”), the largest dinosaur in Australia and the second largest globally by mass and length.

Managed by the Outback Gondwana Foundation Ltd (OGF), a not-for-profit charity founded in 2007, the ENHM has grown through significant contributions from OGF and Quilpie Shire Council, both of which have provided substantial cash and in-kind support for each stage of the project.

Fossilised bones from Australotitan Cooperensis – known as ‘Cooper’ – who is a gigantic titanosaur dinosaur species – were discovered by the Mackenzie family on their farming property and only announced to the world in June 2021.  Cooper’s titanosaur group are a plant-eating dinosaur that represent the largest animals that walked on earth, reaching a similar size to the world’s dinosaur giants found in South America.  Cooper marks Australia’s first entry into the world’s dinosaur giants.

The Mackenzie family are intrinsically linked to the Museum and giant dinosaurs that share their vast cattle property – with the discovery of Cooper changing the lives of the outback Queensland grazing family forever.  Australotitan, “the southern titan”, was first discovered in 2007 east of Cooper Creek, South West Queensland and was scientifically described and named in 2021.

Australotitan, nicknamed “Cooper,” is the largest species of dinosaur ever found in Australia. It is estimated to have reached a height of 5-6.5 metres at the hip and 25-30 metres in length, making it as long as a basketball court and as tall as a two-story building.

It was from this first discovery that a passion for all things prehistoric was born and the Mackenzie’s set about planning and developing the Eromanga Natural History Museum to preserve and share an important – and until then widely unknown – part of Australia’s history.

Australotitan isn't the only dinosaur bones that have been found on the Eromanga property.  Over the past 20 years many other Eromanga dinosaurs have been unearthed – in May 2021 during an Eromanga Natural History Museum dig, the team uncovered dozens of dinosaur bones from another new Eromanga dinosaur.  The lengthy process of preparation and research will determine if it too may belong to another new species.

Tourists visiting the Museum can undertake the Prep Program that includes a Dinosaur Giants tour, induction for fossil preparation and paleo learning on how to prep fossils with one of the Museums trained fossil technicians.

The Eromanga Natural History Museum displays the incredible diversity of Outback Australia’s natural history from the tiniest fossils the size of a sugar grain to the mightiest dinosaurs Australia and the world has ever seen.  The range of megafauna features skeletons from animals that still roam Australia today, on a much smaller scale.

Mackenzie shared “we have megafauna such as a wombat the size of a hippo, the giant Diprotodons, marsupials who carried 70kg joeys in their pouches and roamed Australia with the Aboriginal communities 65,000 years ago.”