New Chum is a

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...

in the

City of Ipswich The City of Ipswich is a local government area in Queensland, Australia, located within the southwest of the Brisbane metropolitan area, including the urban area surrounding the city of Ipswich and surrounding rural areas. Geography The Ci ...

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , established_ ...

, Australia. In the , New Chum had a population of 0 people.

History

The suburb takes its name from the New Chum mine. In the , New Chum had a population of 0 people.

Dinosaur fossils

Underground coal mines were present in the area from the late 1800s to towards the end of the twentieth century. In 1964,

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

footprints were discovered from the Rhondda colliery 230 metres below ground along the sandstone ceiling of the Striped Bacon coal seam. These were initially described as ''

Eubrontes ''Eubrontes'' is the name of fossilised dinosaur footprints dating from the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. They have been identified from France, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Australia (Queensland), USA, India and C ...

'', a type of predatory dinosaur (

theropod Theropoda (; ), whose members are known as theropods, is a dinosaur clade that is characterized by hollow bones and three toes and claws on each limb. Theropods are generally classed as a group of saurischian dinosaurs. They were ancestrally c ...

) footprint. Later, these footprints were considered as evidence for the world's largest Triassic theropod, with legs towering over 2 metres tall. A 3D evaluation of the fossil indicated the footprint length was much smaller than previously reported (34 cm rather than 46 cm long) and its shape was characteristic of the

trace fossil A trace fossil, also known as an ichnofossil (; from el, ἴχνος ''ikhnos'' "trace, track"), is a fossil record of biological activity but not the preserved remains of the plant or animal itself. Trace fossils contrast with body fossils, ...

genus (

ichnogenus An ichnotaxon (plural ichnotaxa) is "a taxon based on the fossilized work of an organism", i.e. the non-human equivalent of an artifact. ''Ichnotaxa'' comes from the Greek ίχνος, ''ichnos'' meaning ''track'' and ταξις, ''taxis'' meaning ...

) ''Evazoum''. The existing hypothesis is that ''Evazoum'' were made by

prosauropods Plateosauridae is a family (biology), family of plateosaurian sauropodomorphs from the Late Triassic of Europe, Greenland, Africa and Asia. Although several dinosaurs have been classified as plateosaurids over the years, the family Plateosaurida ...

, ancestral forms of long-necked

sauropod Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from '' sauro-'' + '' -pod'', 'lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their bo ...

dinosaurs. The bipedal dinosaur track-maker may have resembled the dinosaur ''

Plateosaurus ''Plateosaurus'' (probably meaning "broad lizard", often mistranslated as "flat lizard") is a genus of plateosaurid dinosaur that lived during the Late Triassic period, around 214 to 204 million years ago, in what is now Central and Northern Eur ...

'', and this fossil is the only evidence of this group of dinosaurs in Australia. The next evidence for

sauropodomorphs Sauropodomorpha ( ; from Greek, meaning "lizard-footed forms") is an extinct clade of long-necked, herbivorous, saurischian dinosaurs that includes the sauropods and their ancestral relatives. Sauropods generally grew to very large sizes, had lon ...

in Australia comes over 50 million years later in the Jurassic.

References

{{Ipswich City Suburbs of Ipswich, Queensland