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2003 - 100 years of Australian Dinosaurs

On 7th May 1903, William (Bill) Ferguson found a dinosaur bone near Eagle's Nest whilst mapping the coast and prospecting for coal.  He tentatively identified it as a tooth but, once experts in the UK got a look, it became known as the Cape Paterson Claw.
We don't know if Mr Ferguson really wore a kilt whilst prospecting, but he was of Scottish descent...

William Ferguson was an assistant field geologist in the Victorian Geological Survey (VGS). He was deployed throughout the widely unexplored state of Victoria to carry out field mapping. He was responsible for the discovery of a number of fossil sites, most significantly the first genuine dinosaur bone from Australia in 1903 - an incomplete portion of a claw from a "Jurassic" megalosaur. 

The fossil was published in a paper written by palaeontologist A. S. Woodward in 1906 On a Tooth of Ceratodus and Dinosaurian Claw from the Lower Jurassic of Victoria, Australia (Dunn, 1907).

Thanks to Danielle Shean for the Ferguson research. Read her full article about the fascinating William Ferguson in the 2003 Field Report.

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