After winning the James Moore Memorial Scholarship, the 18-year-old from enrolled in palaeontology at Flinders University and joined the first 2017 ARC field trip and site excavation at the Wellington Caves.

Ms Cross hails from a mixed-farm at Moorlands, near Coomandook in the Mallee region, in rural South Australia.

The scholarship fund was established in 2005 to provide funding for rural high school students to participate in an expedition with Flinders palaeontologists and help curate fossils collected during field work.

“I’ve loved dinosaurs since I was a little kid. But when I won the scholarship, and went underground, I realised my major in vertebrate palaeontology was the right choice,” Ms Cross said. 

She follows in the footsteps of the former Flinders student James Moore, who took his first Flinders palaeontology field trips to the Naracoorte Caves in 2007 to sort bones and assist in digs - including Margaret River, WA in 2008 - while still at high school in Whyalla.

James was hooked by the mystery and excitement of fossil hunting and was a long-time student and technical officer in the Flinders Palaeontology Laboratory until his life was cut short in a fatal car crash on the Eyre Peninsula in December 2014.

Dr Lesley Moore, sister of James, said the family is pleased to give other young rural South Australians the chance to pursue their dreams.

Two other country high school students, Lachlan Clasohm from Maitland and Stephen Anderson from Port Augusta also had the opportunity to join Teagan and the Flinders team at the Wellington Caves dig earlier this year.

They were among the field trip volunteers to work on the three-year Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery grant project looking into how vertebrate fauna of Eastern Australia changed over the past 4 million years in response to environmental change.

Ms Cross is back at uni studying first year Bachelor of Science subject and is one of the first students enrolled in the new Vertebrate Palaeontology major.

“Many people would eventually go a bit crazy being down in the pit, three metres underground in a hole in the cave, but that was what made it interesting,” she said.

“It was a place of discovery and fun.”

“I will never forget the moment when that spade first hit bone. Within minutes I was holding two tail bones from an extinct giant kangaroo. That feeling was incredible, and almost indescribable.

“It suddenly occurs to you that in your hand are the remains of an amazing creature that lived hundreds or thousands of years ago, and that you are the first person to see it and experience it.”

Flinders University Paleaontology Laboratory director Professor Gavin Prideaux describes the Wellington Caves ‘hallowed turf’ of Australian palaeontology, because the first megafauna described in Australia were found there in 1830.

“The Flinders team, led by PhD student Diana Fusco, is currently processing bones sieved from 25 tonnes of clay from the dig earlier this year (23 January to 23 February) and we expect some of our first major discoveries to be announced within 12 months,” Professor Prideaux said.