Many people with a love of the great outdoors are usually those wonderful, boisterous types, obsessed with sport, fitness and travel. However, the champions currently generating international headlines about Queensland’s great outdoors are a rather timid academic lot, micromanaging an excavation site from 100 million years ago where a savage predator left a biological crime scene for the ages (” Ancient fossil reveals carnivore carnage”,DT, 28/7). The Kronosaurus queenslandicus is a real apex dinosaur predator (not an unkind nickname for local MPs). News of its demise must come as a great relief for those indoor types, who become fearful just watching modern TV crime dramas. Marvelling at the scientific techniques that can decode evidence across eons, one must wonder how many other truths written in the codified annals of fossil forensics await us, buried beneath our feet, waiting for the TVs to be switched off and the curiosity to ignite. Alan Sexton, North Parramatta 29July2026
