VIEWFINDER

New Zealand

For the original Maori settlers of New Zealand, the spherical boulders found on the Otago Peninsula were formed when gourd bottles and eel traps washed onto the beach from the wreck of the colossal canoe that brought their first ancestors to the island. The rocky, curving coastline of Shag Point – Matakaea – was said to be made of the boat’s petrified remains. Geologists say the round stones are actually made of calcite crystals cementing together particles of mud and silt in what’s called a “concretion,” a process that started here around the time the dinosaurs went extinct.