Australian dinosaur that lived 98 mil. years ago found

"The jewel in the crown for us is Banjo because it's the most complete meat-eating dinosaur ever found in Australia," Hocknull said.

"All of the carnivorous dinosaurs that we've had in the past were only known from a single bone or tooth," he added.

John Long, a Museum Victoria paleontologist who was not connected with the find, said it was "very exciting stuff."

Long said the last "truly big" dinosaur found in Australia was the partial skeleton of a 30-foot- (9-meter-) long herbivore named Muttaburrasaurus which was found near the Queensland town of Muttaburra in 1981.

Long said only single large dinosaur bones had been found since then.

"This is the first time we've got partially articulated skeletons," Long said. "There is enough of the bones to reconstruct them quite confidently."

"We know so little about the Australian dinosaur fauna that any major paper like this is a massive advance on our previous knowledge," he said.

Hocknull said his team would continue unearthing more bones of the three dinosaurs as well as other sites in the Winton area, where fossil bones have been found scattered on the surface since the 1930

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