Tours to the Dinosaur Stampede
(at Lark Quarry Conservation Park)
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The Dinosaur Stampede, also known at Lark Quarry, is located 110km SW of Winton down a local road with about 35km of dirt/gravel road.
We run regular scheduled tours to the Dinosaur Stampede of three different lengths. From mid April to mid October that is usually five days a week with the full day tour and 3/4 day tour. Then between November and March we run just half day tours as it gets a bit warm. Both the Full Day and 3/4 Day include the site tour at the Dinosaur Stampede and morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea, as well as access to a private grazing property to view the spectacular scenery of the area. The Half Day Dino Dash heads straight to the Dinosaur Stampede with morning tea, time for a 15 minute walk, the 45 minute site tour and then drives straight back to Winton. Wet weather can prevent us from driving on the station tracks of private properties we visit on the longer tours so sometimes we will offer this between April and October as well. Check scheduled tours, availability and prices in the Tour Calendar. Discounts available if you have pre-purchased a Dinosaur Stampede ticket or combination pass such as the Dinosaur Trail or Winton Dinosaur Capital pass from the Age of Dinosaurs Museum. Please contact me via the Contact us page to enquire about this. You will need to provide your ticket number or booking reference to recieve this discount. Do I have to do a tour?
Do I have to do a tour? At Lark Quarry Conservation Park, or the Dinosaur Stampede as it is known, there is a site tour of the footprints. You have to do this tour once you are there in order to see the actual Stampede, but you can drive yourself to this location if you want - it's 110km down the Jundah Road (south west) from Winton, most of which is bitumen but there is till about 35km of dirt along the way. So no, you don't have to do our tour, you can drive yourself to the Dinosaur Stampede. However: 1. You'd miss out on the local information we provide on the natural environment and human history 2. Our longer tours head onto private property that we have access to, to show you the spectacular countryside you wouldn't otherwise get to see 3. You'd have to drive. If you let us do the driving then you get to sit back and relax for the day! 4. By coming with us you don't have to contend with any corrugations or potentially bad dirt roads. We'd love for you to come with us, but the choice is yours and we respect your decision. More about the Dinosaur Stampede
More about the Stampede... The Dinosaur Stampede at Lark Quarry Conservation Park preserves approximately 3300 dinosaur footprints that were made approximately 95 million years ago by the animals that roamed the land at the time. It's thought that the wet environment at the time contained forests, swamps and flood plains through which the animals walked and ran doing their daily business. As a snapshot of one moment in time, a group, or groups, of animals ran through some mud near a water hole. The footprints left in the mud were covered by sand and mud and then more layers of mud and sand, drying out to become rock buried deep beneath the land surface. Millions of years later, as our landscape eroded away, parts of the ancient landscape have been exposed, including the edge of the layer of rock that contains those footprints. Through relatively serendipitous circumstances those footprints were uncovered by paleontologists (and a volunteer named Malcolm Lark) in the 1970's and preserved by Queensland Parks and Wildlife as a Conservation Park (Lark Quarry Conservation Park) and was also the first site to be listed on Australia's list of National Monuments (Dinosaur Stampede National Monument). GALLERY
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Tour Calendar for Dinosaur Stampede Tours:
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