Australian Age of Dinosaurs Ltd (AAOD) is a not for profit organisation located in Winton, Queensland and founded by David and Judy Elliott in 2003. The organisation’s activities include operation of the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History (the Museum) which holds annual dinosaur digs in the Winton Formation of western Queensland and oversees the year-round operation of Australia’s most productive dinosaur fossil preparation laboratory. Since 2005, the AAOD Museum has accumulated the largest collection of Australian dinosaur fossils in the world and holds the holotype specimens of Diamantinasaurus matildae ("Matilda"), Australia’s most complete sauropod skeleton, and Australovenator wintonensis ("Banjo"), Australia’s most complete theropod skeleton. The museum is open to the public daily from April to end September and open six days (closed Sundays) from October to end March. In 2013 it hosted 23,000 admissions and 142 group tours.© Wikipedia
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Contact detailsE: info@aaod.com.auW: australianageofdinosaurs.comP: 07 4657 0712
While staying in Winton, Queensland we decided to take a tour of the Australian Age of Dinosaur Museum about 20 kilometres out of town. The Museum is located on a Jump-up - a mesa plateau that stands 75 metres above the surrounding area - the views are fabulous. Once you turn off the main highway the road is mostly dirt but in very good condition and well worth the trip.
You will need to arrive at the Museum about 15 minutes before the tour in order to purchase a ticket. You then walk or drive to the Laboratory to commence the tour and see some of the large bones that have been found in the area. We observed the process of removing the rock from around the bones in order to identify the dinosaurs - you can volunteer to help with this process and are taught how to carefully remove rock so as not to damage the bone. It will apparently take years to work on the samples they have already collected in order to extract all the bones.
After this part of the tour you head back to the Collection Room where you will see real fossilised bones, listen to a talk by one of the staff about the history of dinosaur discoveries in the area, digs that take place, and then watch an animated recreation of the "Banjo" and "Matilda" dinosaurs.
The Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum also houses a great gift shop - I have a young nephew who is fascinated by dinosaurs and he wanted to know if I saw a real one (he is only 5). I would highly recommend that you take the short drive to the Jump-up and see the great work being done with these amazing discoveries.