82-Year-Old Fossil Hunter's Decades-Long Quest Yields Groundbreaking Evolutionary Insights

In 2025, Robert Beattie, an 82-year-old fossil hunter, is making headlines for a discovery that is changing our understanding of insect evolution. Beattie's passion for palaeontology was ignited in 1948, when as a child, he found a Permian fossil while on a family holiday in the coastal town of Gerringong, New South Wales.

Since then, Beattie has dedicated his life to fossil collecting, working as a science and agriculture teacher and studying palaeontology at Macquarie University in the 1960s. In retirement, he has focused his efforts full-time on his lifelong passion, bringing his findings to the Australian Museum over the years.

Beattie's most recent discovery, made at a fossil site in the central tablelands of New South Wales, is a new species of non-biting midge that dates back 151 million years to the Jurassic period. This find challenges long-held assumptions about the evolution of this group of insects, suggesting they likely originated in the southern hemisphere, on the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana, rather than the northern Laurasia as previously believed.

According to the study co-author Dr. Matthew McCurry of the Australian Museum, Beattie's discovery highlights the geographical bias in fossil research, which has historically focused more on the northern hemisphere. "When we actually do look in the southern hemisphere, there are fossils to find, and they can start to correct that understanding," McCurry says.

Beattie, who is now a research associate at the Australian Museum, has no plans to slow down his fossil hunting efforts. With a field trip planned next month to Penrose in the NSW southern highlands, the avid palaeontologist continues to uncover the secrets of the past, one fossil at a time.