General Monthly Meeting
Fishing with a Hammer in Australia and Antarctica
Dr Alex Ritchie, Australian Museum
Date: Wednesday, 2nd October, 2002
Time: 6:00 for 6:30 pm
Venue: Search & Discover Room, Australian Museum,
Collins St., Sydney (William St. entrance)
Alex Ritchie's rediscovery of one of the world's richest fossil sites, near Canowindra in central NSW, was a highlight of his professional career. The Canowindra site was first discovered in 1956 when a rock slab with about 115 well-preserved Devonian fossil fishes was uncovered during road works - but the actual layer from which it came was not recorded at the time.
In 1993, after almost 20 years of searching, Alex Ritchie relocated this unique, world-class fossil site. With massive community help (council, farmers, business people, high schools etc.), he excavated it and recovered 60-70 tonnes of rock bearing an estimated 3,700 fossil fish, the largest of which reached 1.6 metres long. Eight fossil fish taxa are now known to be present, most of them new to science, but many more specimens remain buried at the same site awaiting excavation, making this a potential World Heritage site.
Alex Ritchie and his colleague, Dr Zerina Johanson, who are studying these spectacular fossil finds, were assisted by hundreds of paying "volunteers", working in groups, to clean and cast the fossils for study. Community & public participation was one of the most exciting features of the Canowindra project.
Largely as a result of Alex's spectacular discoveries at Canowindra, a new "Age of Fishes Museum" has been created to house and display the remarkable fossils found there in 1993. His main aim was to combine scientific research and innovative displays to produce a major educational and tourist facility with long-term economic benefits for central west New South Wales.
Dr Alex Ritchie was born in Scotland and studied geology at Edinburgh University (1955-59), gaining his BSc (Hons) in Geology. He also carried out research on early fossil fishes, for which he was awarded a PhD in 1963. He lectured in Geology at Edinburgh University (1960-63) and Sheffield University (1963-67) before joining the Australian Museum in 1968 as its Curator of Fossils.
Dr Ritchie was the Palaeontologist at the Australian Museum from 1968 until he retired in late 1995. On his retirement the Australian Museum Trust awarded him a Research Fellowship, an honorary position enabling him to continue active palaeontological research based at the Australian Museum, with full access to its facilities and resources.
Alex Ritchie's main research interests involve the evolution, relationships and distribution of the earliest fishes, which lived between 500 and 350 million years ago and he has collected their remains in many parts of Australia and also in Antarctica. In the 1970's Alex discovered the oldest known fishes in the world, strange little armour-plated jawless creatures, from rocks in the Northern Territory dated about 480 million years old. Alex's main research project involves the distribution and relationships of certain armoured fishes, or placoderms.
In addition to his scientific research work Alex Ritchie has contributed to many of the Australian Museum's educational and public programmes and was heavily involved in many major exhibitions, He also initiated the Museum's successful "Dinosaur Appeal" in 1975 and an even more successful 1993 ABC Quantum appeal to save "Eric", an opalised pliosaur skeleton from Coober Pedy, South Australia.
Alex Ritchie has been a leading public activist against the insidious spread, teaching and influence of so-called "Creation Science" in Australian schools, colleges and universities. In 1995 he was the second recipient of the Riversleigh Society Medal and, in November 1996, he was awarded the ABC Eureka Prize for Promotion of Science.
Report on the General Monthly Meeting
by Karina Kelly.
The October Meeting of the Royal Society of New South Wales was addressed by Dr Alex Ritchie of the Australian Museum on the theme "Fishing with a Hammer and Chisel." Alex has spent his life studying fossil fish - in particular those of the Devonian period more than 350 million years ago. Ritchie came to Australia from Scotland in the late 1960s to join the curatorial team at the Australian Museum. He joined an Antarctic expedition in the summer of 1970 - 71 and for 2 months the 8 person team scoured the geological strata looking for interesting geological features. Ritchie was "fishing with a hammer and chisel" - looking for more examples of Groenlandaspis - ('Greenland shield') a species first discovered in Greenland in 1929.
The society was treated to some spectacular slides of the impressive landscapes of Antarctica including a mountain, which was named Mount Ritchie after the speaker. Ritchie was very excited to find that the same species, Groenlandaspis had indeed existed in Antarctica. Meanwhile, back at the Australian Museum, a large slab of rock from Canowindra, NSW had been on display since the 1950's. The slab contained more than a hundred fossil fish. It was displayed behind glass and Ritchie hadn't paid much attention to it. Then, in 1980, the glass came off the exhibit when it was necessary to move it. In the middle was a fine specimen of the Canowindra Grossi. Palaeontologist, Bob Jones opened up more fish on the slab and found a small specimen of the Groenlandaspis. Ritchie was overjoyed. Here was the fish he'd gone searching for in Antarctica, practically in his own backyard.
He returned to the site in Canowindra where the slab had been discovered on several occasions but could find nothing on the surface. Finally Ritchie convinced the Canowindra Council to supply a 20 tonne excavator and in July 1993 a ten day dig began. This time he was fishing with something a little larger than a hammer and chisel.
Several years of careful work on the 60 - 70 tonnes of stone slabs removed from the site has revealed 3,700 fish but Ritchie believes there could be another 10,000 still waiting to be discovered. The fish were lying fully preserved and side by side, closely packed together. Ninety five percent of the fish were right way up. Ritchie believes that the fish were trapped in a pool that dried up 360 million years ago. For six years, every month Ritchie spent the weekend with volunteers who helped to uncover the fossil fish in Canowindra's showground, where the slabs had been stored. About a thousand people gave their time to help with the project. Like a proud fisherman, Ritchie held up a cast of a 1.7 metre fish, found on one of the slabs.
Ritchie's ambition was to build a museum on the site where the fossils were found - uncovering more fish 'in situ' for the displays. But the people of Canowindra wanted the museum to be in town and that's where it now stands. Of the 3,700 fish discovered, only 2 were lungfish. Ritchie believes there's a possibility of finding the first 'walking' fish at Canowindra. There is evidence to suggest, he said that the original number of toes on these walking fish was not 5 but 8. All of which leads one to believe that Canowindra has not finished telling it's story of a dry time 360 million years ago. Despite having retired from the Australian Museum a few years ago, Ritchie maintains a strong interest in the fossils of Canowindra and in particular the story of Groenlandaspis which has now been found in six continents.