Diamonds to Dinosaurs #faveobjects

Watch this video to find out about Professor John Long's #faveobjects at the WA Museum, and why the Diamonds to Dinosaurs Gallery is important to him.

See more about the Diamonds to Dinosaurs Gallery here. 

Transcript

My favourite object in this entire gallery is this fish here, Mcnamaraspis, which became the first state fossil emblem in Australia, proclaimed in December 1995. I found it in1986, on my very first expedition to Gogo, I prepared it, and eventually as we went through this process of working with Dianella Primary Sutherland School, lobbying the Government to have a State fossil emblem established. So we were the very first, and it’s taken twenty years for another state, New South Wales, to follow in Western Australia’s footsteps.

There’s really a lot of personal stuff in this gallery that’s really special in my heart because as a child I grew up collecting fossils, since the age of seven. I had a very big private fossil collection, many thousands of specimens, and I didn’t know what to do with it. When I got the job here as a curator I knew finally I had a home for this collection. So I donated my entire collection to the Western Australian Museum. I didn’t want any money for it – no tax deductions. I just wanted it to have a good home. So, you see things like this fish up here, Leptolepis, I actually collected that when I was ten years of age. And several of these sharks teeth I collected in Victoria as a young boy. So I’m really pleased to see they have a great home, and they’re on display for everyone to see and to learn from.  I just hope some of them make it into the new galleries that the Western Australian Museum are going to build.