By Alesha Capone
Hoppers Crossing teacher Simona Grippi says she was thrilled to discover an ancient dinosaur skull on the Victorian coast last year.
Miss Grippi, who has a Diploma of Education and an Honours Degree in Zoology, lives in Hobsons Bay.
In addition to teaching at Baden Powell College, she is a volunteer prospector with the Melbourne Museum – someone who goes looking for dinosaur bones in the wild and extracts them from the land.
Miss Grippi has found dinosaur fossils, bones and footprints in the Inverloch and Otways areas, although their exact locations remain confidential after some of the footprints were vandalised.
In between lockdowns last year, during May, Miss Grippi went prospecting in the San Remo region along with two other volunteers, looking for fossils among cretaceous rock at the beach.
“I stepped on a big rock and just saw something that looks unusual,” she said.
“I realised that embedded in a big, big rock was more than just a little bone.
“I found a skull, it’s as big as two watermelons put together.”
The volunteers asked the Melbourne Museum for permission to extract the bone.
They spent six hours cutting and chipping away at the rock, and were delighted to find a complete skull and jaw.
The skull, which is now at the museum, is from the remains of a Koolasuchus dinosaur.
Miss Grippi said the Koolasuchus was only found in Victoria and lived in the state 120 million years ago.
“It was a giant amphibian, a bit like a huge crocodile or axolotl with a head like a salamander,” she said.
A video of Miss Grippi and her friends extracting the skull can be seen on her website, which she created to educate people about dinosaurs, and includes interactive games.
Miss Grippi said she wanted to teach children – both girls and boys – that dinosaurs used to live in Australia, not just overseas.
In addition, Miss Grippi said she wanted to inspire young people to look for dinosaur fossils in the outdoors after lockdown.
“I think my favourite aspect is that kind of magic, that thrill when you find that bone and to be the first one to see it in millions of years,” she said.
During lockdown, Miss Grippi started writing a series of “educational and fun” children’s books about dinosaurs, with her 21-year-old niece in Italy providing the illustrations.
The books include two main characters who go on a series of dinosaur-related adventures.
A picture book has already been published and another three books have been written, including one titled DinosOz Adventures Book 1: The Tunnel, which will be released this week.
Details: www.dinosoz.com.au, booksonlineaustralia.com.au/shop/dinosoz-friends/
