In the opal industry, fossils don’t tend to be valued as highly as other specimens of the gem – in fact, they're considered "bycatch". But for opal buyer Mike Poben, the spectacular freak discovery of two opalised jawbone fragments from the same animal was the "holy grail" – and led to the naming of the state’s first new dinosaur species in almost a century.

An artist's impression of a Weewarrasauras Pobeni. Credit:University of New England

Weewarrasauras Pobeni, named after Mr Poben and Wee Warra, where the fossil was found, was a small, herbivorous dinosaur that walked the earth on two legs about 100 million years ago – back when the area of outback NSW near the opal mining mecca Lightning Ridge received good rainfall and was fringed by waterways.

It was about the size of a kelpie, or as University of New England palaeontologist Phil Bell described it, “a good pet-size dinosaur”.

These prehistoric reptiles "probably formed family or small herd groups for protection" from large, knife-toothed megoraptorids, Dr Bell said, and “were probably pretty docile so herding is a good defence”.