The treasure beneath our feet
Hidden beneath the surface of New Zealand is a treasure trove of ancient marine relics that scientists want to share.
Today a palaeontologist is taking a group of 100 on a fossil hunt expedition in the Hurupi Stream in the Southern Wairarapa.
The trip coincides with International Fossil Day. Victoria University palaeontologist James Crampton hoped it would soon be celebrated regularly.
“It would be great to have local museums organising events around this date, or universities, or local rock clubs . . . it’s just an excuse to get excited about fossils.”
He said Hurupi Stream was great for fossil hunting.
“The stream is also always actively eroding so there is always new material being uncovered naturally,” Crampton said.
Fossil shellfish in the stream bed dated back 10 to 12 million years.
“A couple of years ago we found a lower jaw of a baleen whale.”
At the time, a large part of the North Island was underwater.
“The whales would have been splashing around an i sland in the middle of what is now the Wairarapa. The fossils we find is the marine life living around that island.”
Crawford, who has a PhD from Cambridge in the UK, once found an ichthyosaur fossil in Marlborough. It was large marine reptile similar to dolphins and whales.
Crawford said there were many fantastic stories “sitting on this isolated island in the middle of the Southwest Pacific”.
Geologist Bruce Hayward, author of Out of the ocean and into the fire, said there have been a number of “rare and precious finds” in Auckland.
These included fossil shellfish from the Jurassic age, 200 million years ago, leaves and fern found in lake mudstone that tell the stories of the ancient forests, and evidence of sea life from 20 million years ago that hint at a warmer, subtropical climate.
Among the youngest fossils found in Auckland were caches of moa bones dug up in a swamp near Clevedon in the early 19th century and another in a Greenlane lava cave in 1957.