Prehistoric Path

Prehistoric Path. Travel back through the ages and roam amongst our prehistoric display with a dinosaur around every corner.

The kids will love it!

The Otway Ranges have their origins in the Cretaceous period around 120 million years ago, at a time when Australia was connected to Antarctica as part of the super-continent Gondwanaland.

Dinosaurs roamed this ancient land. The plant-eating Hypsilophodont was the most common. It had large hind legs, a long tail, small head and small forelegs â€¦ like the kangaroos. Less common was the ostrich-like dinosaur Ornithomymid, which had a beak and air-filled bones like modern birds.

As Australia began its northward drift, enormous pressures developed within the land mass and several deep ravines were formed. They became huge freshwater lakes, several kilometres deep, and over millions of years they filled with fine sandy sediment.

As the lakes silted up, some of the streams that fed water to them became boggy. Dinosaurs sank into the mud and perished. Their remains are now being uncovered at Dinosaur Cove. Other similar fossil deposits remain hidden in the Otway sandstone.

In time, sediment in the lakes solidified into sandstone, and as Gondwanaland continued to break up, pressure pushed the sandstone block upwards. This became the Otway landmass.

Over the millions of years since the Cretaceous period, Australia has continued its northward drift. In that time, climates have changed, sea-levels have risen and fallen and both the vegetation and wildlife continued to evolve. Most of the flora and fauna of the Otway forests have geologically recent origins – the mammals, the insects and other wildlife, the gum trees and wattles.

However, tiny remnants of the Cretaceous era, that time of deep mysteries, have survived almost as they were when they shared the Otways with the dinosaurs. These include the Nothofagus (beech), tree ferns and some primitive fauna, examples of which you can see here at Otway Fly Tree Top Adventures.