Queensland Museum

Favorite Photos of 2019

A Rothschild giraffe takes a stroll in its outside enclosure on an unusually warm December day at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo.

A Rothschild giraffe takes a stroll in its outside enclosure on an unusually warm December day at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo.

2019 was a momentous year for me with my studies abroad and the launch of Natural Curios. I lived on the other side of the planet for five months in Brisbane, Australia, which spurred me to start writing this blog about the natural world’s curious nature, which was on full display during my travels around Australia and New Zealand. After a year of exploring why Australia’s koalas and monotremes are some of nature’s most curious creatures, how climate change is threatening both Queensland’s flying foxes and Grand Teton National Park’s glaciers and how a giant fossil sea monster blasted out of the outback with dynamite ended up at Harvard, I wanted to dedicate an article to highlighting some of my favorite photographs from this past year. I was lucky enough to explore the world’s largest coral reef and some of the oldest rainforests in the world. I climbed on top of volcanoes and encountered wild parrots in the snowy Southern Alps. From Australia to New Zealand to Chicago to Los Angeles, and some locations in between, I was able to cover a lot of ground over Natural Curios’s inaugural year. Thankfully, I always had a camera with me ready to capture whatever sparked my imagination. Enjoy my favorite photographs from 2019 and stay tuned for new articles in the next few days! Also, don’t forget to check out Natural Curios’s full photography gallery here!

Landscape

Below are some of my favorite landscape pictures from the other side of the world. These pictures comprise both iconic locations, like the Great Barrier Reef and the Sydney Harbor, and more tucked away places, like a quiet, secluded spot in the Brisbane Botanical Garden and Australia’s easternmost point at Byron Bay. My week-long sojourn to New Zealand (bottom row) provided some of the most breathtaking landscapes I have ever seen from the mist-shrouded waterfalls of Milford Sound to the black-sand beaches and soaring volcanic cliffs of Piha Beach to the public parks populated by New Zealand’s most populous residents—sheep.

Animals

These animal pictures are among my favorite from the past year and include animals from both Australia and New Zealand, as well as zoos and parks across the United States. Going to Australia, I was incredibly excited to see world-famous residents like cuddly koalas, gargantuan saltwater crocodiles (aka “Salties”) and ripped kangaroos. The creature that most caught my imagination while I was Down Under was the blue-headed, killer cassowary that disperses seeds in Australia’s primeval rainforests at the top of the continent. Back in the States, I captured such striking creatures as Indonesia’s green peafowl and Lowland gorillas. One resident of Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo particularly caught my attention. The Guam kingfisher is extinct on its native island due to invasive snakes and only staves off oblivion in a few zoos around the world, including the Lincoln Park Zoo. There are less than 100 individuals in the whole world. I also captured animals in the wild, like Southern California’s sea lions and New Zealand’s alpine kea in the Southern Alps.

Natural History

Natural history is the study that encompasses all of my favorite disciplines, including paleontology, zoology, botany, geology and environmental studies that, together, help us understand how plants and animals have interacted with the natural world over the last 4 billion years. Natural history museums are my favorite places to visit because they provide insights into the natural world through the display of a diverse assortment of interesting and bizarre specimens, like a juvenile great white shark pickled in alcohol, a dinosaur fossil with mummified skin, or a macabre wall decorated with the ancient skulls of hundreds of dire wolves exhumed from Southern California’s tar pits. Natural history displays also help us picture the distant past by assembling skeletons, like a giant predatory mosasaur or the giant Diprotodon, the largest marsupial ever. Sometimes they even give us ideas of what these primeval behemoths would look like with flesh, skin, fur or scales on their fossilized bones, like the Australian Museum did with its Diprotodon model. Only at natural history museums can you take in the scale of a pygmy blue whale skeleton and feel the explosive power palpable in the split second before an inland taipan, the most venomous snake on earth, strikes a rat. The tuatara picture is the only picture of something that is still alive, but even it offers a look deep into the earth’s past as it represents the last vestige of a whole order of reptiles (bottom row).

Cityscape, Architecture and Miscellaneous

From Sydney’s bustling fish market to Brisbane’s skyline glistening in the late afternoon sun, there were a few of my favorite pictures this year that I could not fit in the three categories above. Among them were several glimpses of the splendid gothic architecture of Australia’s Saint Mary and Saint Patrick cathedrals in Sydney and Melbourne, respectively, and the more subdued St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Queenstown, New Zealand. Queenstown’s soaring peaks also provided an intriguing backdrop for ornate grave stones. The one benefit of a mostly rainy week in Auckland were the wonderful rainbows that would spring up throughout Auckland’s bustling port, giving the cranes and barges a magical quality. And I could not resist putting a picture of one of Steve Irwin’s iconic saltwater crocodiles moving back into its enclosure after a show at the Australia Zoo.

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Studied Abroad: Kronosaurus queenslandicus

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The most spectacular fossil of Queensland’s famed prehistoric reptile is displayed almost 10,000 miles away and locked in plaster. This is the remarkable tale of a wayward Australian sea monster at Harvard known as “Plasterosaurus.”

Kronosaurus queenslandicus once terrorized the Early Cretaceous inland seas of Queensland, Australia with jaws so big it could make the shark from Jaws blush. It looked something like a small whale with the jaws of a crocodile and would use its four paddles to fly through Australia’s primeval waters along with the many other large aquatic reptiles of its day. This is a good chance to address the confusing nature of Mesozoic sea reptile classification. Kronosaurus is the largest known pliosaur, a group with big heads and short necks. Pliosaurs are part of the overarching and similarly-named plesiosaur group. Thanks to museum displays and dinosaur books, most of us think of plesiosaurs as sea creatures with small heads and long necks, such as Plesiosaurus, the group’s poster boy. In actuality, Plesiosaurs contain both the long-necked and large head varieties, and Kronosaurus definitely falls in the latter group.

Named after the Greek Titan Kronos, famous for devouring his offspring, Kronosaurus would have been a similar all-devouring presence, eating everything from its fellow marine reptiles to ammonites, with its large, crushing teeth capable of crushing their hard shells. Its head that yielded its mouth full of daggers accounts for almost one fourth of its predicted overall length.

Kronosaurus’ huge teeth were the fuel of nightmares for the creatures that lived alongside it in Queensland’s Cretaceous waters. These teeth belong to the Harvard Kronosaurus.

Kronosaurus’ huge teeth were the fuel of nightmares for the creatures that lived alongside it in Queensland’s Cretaceous waters. These teeth belong to the Harvard Kronosaurus.

The massive sea monster was named in 1901 after the discovery of a fossilized piece of jaw. It was originally thought to be from a creature in the dolphin-like Ichthyosaur group, before being classified correctly as a pliosaur in 1924. This jaw fragment is the type specimen (first described specimen for a species) of Kronosaurus queenslandicus, and still resides in the collection of the Queensland Museum, in Brisbane. It is a remarkably important fossil, but nowhere near the tremendous skeleton blown out of the Queensland limestone in the early 1930s.

William Schevill was a graduate student at Harvard when he went on a collecting trip to Australia for Harvard’s Museum of Contemporary Zoology (MCZ) in 1931. Giant fossil reptiles could not have been further from Schevill’s mind when he originally set out on the expedition, as the main goal was to simply collect specimens of Australia’s remarkable wildlife that the MCZ was lacking. Most importantly the museum wanted marsupials, from koalas to the “Tasmanian wolf” or thylacine as it was about to go extinct in the next five years. Schevill ended up bringing back perhaps the most iconic specimen in the Museum’s collection.

After most of his group had departed with preserved marsupials, Schevill was alerted by a rancher to something strange sticking out of the ground on his property near Hughenden, Queensland. That something ended up being the bones of the most complete Kronosaurus skeleton ever discovered. But there was the big problem of breaking the bones out of the solid limestone that entombed them. Schevill convinced a British migrant, who was knowledgeable about explosives, to help blast the limestone tomb into large blocks. According to author Nancy Pick writing about the MCZ in the book The Rarest of the Rare, Schevill’s helping hand was nicknamed the maniac because of rumors that he had murdered somebody. Unsurprisingly, he did end up being skilled in explosives and used dynamite to blast out the Kronosaurus skeleton into several large blocks that weighed around six tons each.

Kronosaurus’ story takes a bit of a sad turn here as the remarkable skeleton was shipped around the world to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Paleontology imperialism has become a big issue in recent years with the struggle of Mongolia to keep its incredible fossils within its borders and to this day some in Australia must feel dismayed that the most iconic skeleton of Kronosaurus resides in Boston at one of the world’s most renowned universities. For a while, paleontologists in Australia were left only with the jaw fragment as the best specimen was shipped to the Ivy League.

On the other side of the world, Kronosaurus sat in the large limestone blocks gathering dust far away from its home for decades. The skull, with its menacing teeth and great size, was prepared right away while the skeleton lingered in stone. It may still be there if a local businessman interested in sea monsters didn’t offer the museum $10,000 to complete the skeleton restoration. Scientists then reconstructed and displayed the skeleton using the actual bones and plaster to fill in the missing pieces. Plaster accounts for a third of the display.

The Kronosaurus skeleton looms behind the Triceratops skull in the Romer Hall of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.

The Kronosaurus skeleton looms behind the Triceratops skull in the Romer Hall of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.

As with every restoration of a prehistoric creature, the Harvard Kronosaurus is not 100 percent accurate. The skeleton was missing a large part of its backbone, which led to the reconstruction team probably adding in too many vertebrae, making the displayed creature too long at 42 feet. Paleontologists today think the creature was closer to 30 feet in real life.

The fact that the Harvard Kronosaurus is encased in plaster and on the museum’s wall makes re-examining the specimen difficult. Scientist’s have nicknamed it “Plasterosaurus.” Australian scientists have clamored for the specimen to be freed from its plaster encasing and re-examined along with more recent partial finds from Queensland to get a better understanding of what the creature actually looked like and where it should sit in the marine reptile family tree. But the iconic Harvard Kronosaurus is still exhibited with its huge mouth agape along with possibly 8 extra vertebrae. Ironically, while being at the museum made Kronosaurus much more well known to paleontology fans around the world, it is now making it more unknown to the scientists who want to study it.

I have been able to see this magnificent specimen twice in person and was taken aback by its size both times. It is hard to even fit it in one camera shot when you are looking right at it and its huge head makes it obvious why the species has become such a hit at the museum. But Queensland is still crazy about Kronosaurus, even if the most famous specimen is 10,000 miles away. Kronosaurus Korner Museum in Richmond, Queensland houses several large marine reptile fossils and takes people out on fossil digs in the surrounding fossil rich area. A full-size replica of its namesake fossil reptile greets visitors outside the museum with its mouth agape, just like its fossil counterpart at Harvard.

Harvard’s Kronosaurus queenslandicus.

Harvard’s Kronosaurus queenslandicus.

All photographs and art by Jack Tamisiea.

Sources:

https://www.wired.com/2011/06/the-frustrating-legacy-of-plasterosaurus/

https://www.revolvy.com/page/William-E.-Schevill

https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/australia-over-time/extinct-animals/kronosaurus-queenslandicus/

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Queensland Museum Review

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Brisbane’s natural history museum showcases an intriguing collection of specimens from across Australia’s most biodiverse state, including a great white shark and some iconic Australian dinosaur tracks.

Nestled in Brisbane’s cultural district, right across the river from bustling downtown Brisbane, the Queensland Museum houses specimens that tell the evolving story of the state of Queensland. The museum was founded by the Queensland Philosophical Society in 1863 inside a windmill. From there it has changed locations several times, eventually landing at Brisbane’s South Bank area in 1986, as well as changed hands, eventually landing in the hands of the Queensland Government. 

Although a relatively smaller museum compared to other natural history museums (and not much to look at from the outside), what the museum lacks in size and stature it makes up for with interesting specimens and strong narrative exhibits. The main foyer, which also houses the shop, has several large sea creatures and a 1920’s aircraft suspended from the ceiling. The airplane belonged to famed Australian aviator, Bert Hinkler. Hinkler was the first pilot to fly solo from England to Australia and was dubbed the “Australian Lone Eagle” (an awesome nickname). It was very cool to see the retro plane contrasted in the rafters with several of Australia’s iconic large sea creatures, including a great white shark, lunging at the plane with jaws agape, and a manta ray soaring through the air with its pectoral fins splayed.

Above: Image 1: Close up of the lower wing and wheel of the plane. Image 2: Great white shark and dolphin suspended near the plane. Image 3: Hinkler’s plane.

After you walk through the large foyer you come across several display cases housing interesting specimens from around Queensland, including a giant crystal, a soaring termite mound, and the trunk of a tree carved by early explorers to Queensland hundreds of years ago. A juvenile great white shark was displayed in a large tank of alcohol, preserved as if it had just been pulled out of the ocean yesterday. Although it pales in comparison to coming across an actual white shark while exploring the reef, there is something very interesting in seeing a real white shark up close and taking in the rows of teeth and the cold, black (“doll eyes” as Quint calls them in the movie Jaws) eyes of the misunderstood marine behemoth. Although Hollywood has painted a deceptively fearsome picture of sharks, the fact is that shark-human encounters (especially with great whites) are very rare and we kill sharks exponentially more than they even attack us (around 100 million sharks are killed each year due to everything from fear to shark fin soup). Getting a chance to see this shark up close was very fascinating because there is still so much we do not know about great white sharks, from their breeding habits to how many of them are still inhabiting our oceans.

Above: various views of the great white shark specimen, including a painting I did afterwards based on the specimen.

The shark was not the only giant ocean creature displayed in this first floor hall. Several large cephalopods inhabit similar tanks to the shark. A diamondback squid, named for the triangular shape of its two fins, and a giant cuttlefish, the largest species of cuttlefish that can change color like the rest of its brethren, occupy one of these tanks. A nearby tank contains a giant squid, a deep-sea denizen of mythic proportions. This squid specimen is aptly giant (its tentacles need to be folded back in order to fit inside of its tank) with an accompanying eye bigger than a balled up fist. The huge eye helps it see in the abyss that it resides in and helps it find prey, which it quickly disposes of with its great beak.

The magnificent eye of the giant squid straight from the abyss.

The magnificent eye of the giant squid straight from the abyss.

The final display case of the first floor hall houses the skeleton of Australia’s, and the world’s for that matter, most venomous land snake, the inland taipan, about to strike the skeleton of a rat. The dramatic scene is frozen mid-strike, showing off the articulated tension in the upper-half of the snake as it lunges forward. Inland taipan venom is potent enough to kill several humans, but one does not have to worry about coming across this shy and rare species of snake that lives in semi-arid habitats. Only a couple people have been bitten and none of them have died thanks to quick medical treatment. This display and the shark specimen were my two favorite specimens from the Queensland Museum.

A rat frozen in an attempt to scurry away from the lightning-quick strike of an inland taipan.

A rat frozen in an attempt to scurry away from the lightning-quick strike of an inland taipan.

After walking past all of the display cases, you arrive at the paleontology exhibit, called Lost Creatures, which houses several dinosaur and megafauna specimens from around Queensland. The exhibit proceeds in chronological order, from Australia’s early days as part of the supercontinent Gondwana through the evolution of Australian dinosaurs and then into the domination of large marsupials during the Pleistocene period. 

Several specimens stood out, including a large swath of dinosaur tracks from Lark Quarry, the site of Dinosaur Stampede National Monument which is the location of the world’s only preserved dinosaur stampede. Part of the actual quarry is displayed at the museum, while a large cast of the rest of the quarry shows the large predatory dinosaur footprint and the resulting chaos that ensued as the herd of herbivores frantically dispersed. In addition to the famous dinosaur tracks, the exhibit also displays the actual fossil of a small ankylosaur (armored dinosaur) called Kunbarrasaurus and a large cast of Muttaburrasaurus, Australia’s famed iguanodon, that acts as the fulcrum of the exhibit. Both of these dinosaurs resided in primeval Queensland and are displayed alongside several other fossils dating from their time, including pterosaurs skeletons that “fly” overhead.

Image 1: Muttaburrasaurus skeleton Image 2: Kunbarrasaurus skeleton with some fossilized patches of skins Image 3: The only evidence of a dinosaur stampede, straight from the Lark Quarry (most prints shown here are from the startled bipedal herbivores).


The second part of the paleontology exhibit focuses on Queensland’s rich history of megafauna, displaying skeletons of giant kangaroos and the skeleton of the largest marsupial ever to lumber across the continent, diprotodon, the precursor to today’s wombats and koalas. My favorite part of this exhibit was the skeleton of megalania, a fearsome giant goanna dating back to this super-sized era of earth’s animals. The museum does a great job of displaying how fearsome this creature would have been to encounter, displaying its bones alongside the skeletons of a Komodo dragon and a crocodile monitor (which has eerily long teeth itself), the two largest species of living lizards. Both skeletons are dwarfed by megalania’s skeleton. This fearsome beast has been found with giant kangaroo bones inside its gut, which has led to widespread belief that these monster lizards fed on the monster marsupials they shared the Pleistocene outback with. It is also hypothesized that megalania was probably venomous like the monitor lizards of today. This venom would have helped them tackle larger prey.

Megalania is the giant killer lizard from Queensland’s past. In the back of the picture to the left you can see a Komodo dragons skeleton, roughly the length of megalania’s tail for scale.

Megalania is the giant killer lizard from Queensland’s past. In the back of the picture to the left you can see a Komodo dragons skeleton, roughly the length of megalania’s tail for scale.

Going up to the second level, visitors pass a large amount of construction and a fun case of mammal skulls that allows visitors to test their knowledge by trying to match the skulls with the correct species. On the second floor is the Wild State exhibit. Queensland truly is a wild state (the most biodiverse of Australia’s six states) housing 13 different terrestrial bioregions (ecologically and geographically defined regions larger than an ecosystem) and 14 different marine bioregions. These bioregions serve as home to 70 percent of Australia’s mammal species, 80 percent of its bird species, half of its reptiles and amphibians and 8,000 different species of plants according to a figure outside of the exhibit. To quickly put these numbers in perspective, Australia is the number one mega-diverse country in terms of the amount of endemic vertebrate species in the whole world, which makes Queensland’s diversity that much more astounding.

Some amazing statistics about Queensland’s biodiversity as Australia’s most mega-diverse state.

Some amazing statistics about Queensland’s biodiversity as Australia’s most mega-diverse state.

The Wild State exhibit does a great job of showcasing this diversity by displaying many of Queensland’s animal species in a sleek modern area, including some with accompanying habitat displays. The animals range from the giant perentie lizard, Australia’s current largest lizard now that the Megalania is no longer around, to dozens of butterfly and moth species, to flying possums, and to the dugongs that feed on the seagrass in Queensland’s estuaries. There is a very cool Great Barrier Reef display housing several species of large tropical fish and great big sea turtles.

The Queensland Museum is perfect for locals and tourists alike because it displays several incredible specimens that tell Queensland’s wild story from the mega beasts that used to call it home to the mega-diverse state it has become. The museum is a source of pride for native Queenslanders, as well as a great source of education and inspiration for all visitors. Besides the fact that it is the rare free museum that delivers quality, it also displays several unique specimens I had never seen before. Ultimately, the museum never strays far from the central goal of relaying Queensland’s remarkable natural history journey. 

Pictures and art all by Jack Tamisiea