Paleontology laboratory

Mary Walters, Dave Pickering, Nick van Klaveren, and Raul Vacca

The Palaeontology Laboratory at Monash University Geosciences consists of many volunteers and long term assistants Walters, Pickering, Vacca and van Klaveren as well as Komarower. This laboratory serves as a repository for materials collected by the Palaeontology Group as well as a library of technical literature. The lab prepares casts of material which is exchanged with museums around the world. Walters, Pickering and van Klaveren also actively take part in the field programs of the graduate students and honorary associates. Walters is involved in research of her own on the history of flamingoes on the Australian continent over the past 40 million years and Pickering is interested in faunal assemblages of late Cenozoic age in southeastern Australia, having led several expeditions of his own that have enriched collections of marsupials in the Museum Victoria collections. Pickering is also a preparator working on material from the Early Creataceous of Victoria and the Late Cretaceous of the Chatham Islands.

All of the laboratory staff are frequently involved in helping mount exhibitions constructed by the Monash Science Centre that travel nationally and internationally. Van Klaveren specializes in the mechanics of field operations at the Inverloch site. Raul Vacca from the Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio in Argentina is in charge of the mounting of fossil material for display in exhibitions, in 2003 working with Chris Pierson (School of Geosciences) to reconstruct and freemount a large skeleton of the Jurassic Antarctic dinosaur, Cryolophosaurus.