Country and city high school students have been captivated by the magic of fossil hunting thanks to the annual James Moore Memorial Prize in Palaeontology, which enables them to dig up ancient bones as part of an outback field excursion.
Flinders University Palaeontology Professor Gavin Prideaux says the recent trip to the Alcoota megafauna fossil site, 250km north east of Alice Springs, led by the Flinders Palaeontology Society and the Museum of Central Australia, included the 2019 winners of the James Moore Memorial Prize – one each from rural and city schools – along with one of the 2018 Memorial Prize winners Tasman Dixon.
This year’s city winner, Antoni Camozzato, a Year 10 student at St Michael’s College, Adelaide, was delighted that the prize enabled him to pursue his dream of participating in a fossil expedition.
“The feeling of bringing the ancient remains of long-gone beasts into the light for the first time in 6-to-8 million years is almost indescribable,” Antoni said.
“The first fossil I pulled from the ground, the tibia of an Ilbandornis woodburnei (giant flightless bird), was especially special, even if it was a bit fragmented. I just loved being in the central Australian desert, looking over the Mitchell grass plains, following dry riverbeds and sitting under the breathtaking night sky.”
Rural school prize winner Laluloy Bucar, a Year 11 student at Edward John Eyre High School in Whyalla, said she was excited by palaeontology’s analysis and investigation of early life, the environment and geological events. Significantly, the students’ participation in the Alcoota excursion has encouraged them to continue palaeontology studies.
“My intention to follow palaeontology as a career is now even stronger,” Antoni said. “I hope to remain involved with Flinders University Palaeo Society and eventually study palaeontology at Flinders University in a few years’ time.”
The school students’ passion for engaging with palaeontology underlines the ongoing success of the prize – which was established through the James Moore Memorial Fund in 2015 to honour the memory of a beloved student and technical officer in the Flinders Palaeontology Laboratory who was killed in a 2014 car crash.
Find out more about the James Moore Memorial Fund scholarship and palaeontology at the Flinders University website.