Carter's Rush Opal Field (Cretaceous to of Australia)

Where: New South Wales, Australia (29.6° S, 147.7° E: paleocoordinates 59.5° S, 140.2° E)

• coordinate estimated from map

• small collection-level geographic resolution

When: Wallangulla Sandstone Member (Griman Creek Formation), Early/Lower Cenomanian to Early/Lower Cenomanian (99.6 - 93.5 Ma)

• Although the precise stratigraphic provenance of LRF 100–106 is unknown due to the mining process during which the specimen was discovered and excavated (see Comments in the Systematic palaeontology section below), opals and opalised fossils are routinely sourced from the top of the Finch Claystone near its contact with the overlying Wallangulla Sandstone (both pertaining to the Griman Creek Formation, Rolling Downs Group, Surat Basin; Green et al., 1997).

•"Finch Claystone" is a facies within the Wallangulla Sandstone.

• group of beds-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: terrestrial; mudstone

• deposition is considered to have been initially regressive beach or nearshore marine, followed by paralic to deltaic and finally fluvial floodplain conditions in the upper sequences of the formation (Green et al., 1997).
• non-marine, thinly bedded and interlaminated fine- to medium-grained sandstone and mudstone.

Size class: macrofossils

Primary reference: P. R. Bell, A. Cau, F. Fanti and E. T. Smith. 2015. A large-clawed theropod (Dinosauria: Tetanurae) from the Lower Cretaceous of Australia and the Gondwanan origin of megaraptorid theropods. Gondwana Research 36:473-487 [P. Mannion/G. Varnham]more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 224617: authorized by Philip Mannion, entered by Grace Varnham on 24.03.2022

Creative Commons license: CC BY (attribution)

Taxonomic list

Show authors, comments, and common names
Reptilia
 Theropoda - Megaraptoridae
Megaraptoridae indet.
Megaraptoridae indet. Novas et al. 2013 coelurosaur
LRF 100–106 (fragmentary skeleton)