Community & Business
22 June, 2026
Ian Sobbe posthumously awarded OAM
The late Ian Sobbe, renowned local amateur paleontologist has been posthomously awarded a Order of Australia medal (OAM) in the Kings Birthday Honours for 2026.
The local amateur paleontologist was posthumously awarded an OAM for his services to paleontology.
Mr Sobbe had also been awarded Honorary Research Fellow/ Honorary Associate of the Queensland Museum in 1987.
He passed away in 2025.
Well known around the Clifton district, Mr Sobbe grew up in Clifton, having graduated from Clifton State High School in 1951.
He predominantly worked as a farmer, but was also involved in the community in being a member of the Southern Downs Drought Advisory Committee, past south-eastern zone chairman and State Councillor of the Queensland Grain Growers Association and past chairman of Central Downs Landcare.
In 2024 Mr Sobbe discovered a Thylacoleo carnifex fossil along a dry creek bed, which caused a storm in Paleontological circles.
The extraction of the fossil took seven people and a stretcher.
He and Dr Gilbert Price figured out that the juvenile thylacoleo carnifex likely died of infection and later, malnutrition.
He and his collection were also what was behind the push to build ‘The Clifton Megafauna Experience Centre’.
His extensive collection of fossils would have been housed at the centre.
Mr Sobbe’s posthumous OAM is a well deserved recognition of the work of Clifton’s very own paleontologist.
