At Curio Bay near the southernmost point of New Zealand’’s South Island, you can walk around the remains of a Jurassic fossil forest. Tree stumps are still in their growth position, and fossilised logs criss-cross through the sandstone overlying them. So can we add these pieces of information together – and see what the Curio… Continue reading How Tall were the trees in New Zealand’s Jurassic Fossil Forest at Curio Bay?
Category: Curio Bay – New Zealand’s Jurassic Fossil Forest
The Biggest Tree Stump in the Curio Bay Jurassic Forest
Back in the late 1980s I had the pleasure of meeting the English scientist David Bellamy. Bellamy was famous at the time as ‘The Botanic Man’, and he was in New Zealand to film for ‘Moa’s Ark’, a TV series and book about the development of New Zealand’s flora and fauna (including the extinct moa birds)… Continue reading The Biggest Tree Stump in the Curio Bay Jurassic Forest
Horsetail Marshes of the New Zealand Jurassic
In the Jurassic, New Zealand had ‘horsetails’ (Latin: Equisetum) – an odd-looking plant , a bit like a long brush with whorls of narrow leaves and are related to ferns. Apart from their shape some of the extinct forms had a strange ‘diaphram’ attached to their stems that contained the spores (see the featured image. The… Continue reading Horsetail Marshes of the New Zealand Jurassic
Podozamites – a multi-veined conifer in New Zealand’s Jurassic
Most conifer leaves have just one vein, whether they be the needles of pines, or the much broader leaves of some tropical conifers. This limits their size and shape (they mostly stay small and can’t do fancy stuff like many flowering plant leaves). Just two kinds of conifer have several veins in their leaves –… Continue reading Podozamites – a multi-veined conifer in New Zealand’s Jurassic
New Zealand: The Jurassic fossil forest at Curio Bay
If you make your way down to almost the bottom of New Zealand’s South Island, you can walk among the stumps of a petrified Jurassic forest (that’s about 170 million years old). It’s a gem of New Zealand’s fossil plant history, and because of its complete preservation -pine tree stumps and tree-fern stumps, it’s practically unique. Get… Continue reading New Zealand: The Jurassic fossil forest at Curio Bay
Where was the Murihiku in the Jurassic?
A few years ago I used to teach American classes that came to the University of Queensland. One evening my Stanford class had just arrived and I wandered over to their college accommodation to say Hello. I came across an odd sight – a knot of students surrounding what turned out to be a young… Continue reading Where was the Murihiku in the Jurassic?
Globalisation in the Jurassic – the fossil fern Coniopteris in New Zealand
One of the plant fossils that turns up in New Zealand’s Jurassic rocks is a delicate-looking fern frond called Coniopteris (Arber, 1917; Edwards, 1934; see featured image). The well-known Jurassic fossil forest at Curio Bay (Pole 1999) would have had Coniopteris growing in it. And, oddly enough, it’s in the same family as one of… Continue reading Globalisation in the Jurassic – the fossil fern Coniopteris in New Zealand
Palissya – mysterious cone of New Zealand’s Jurassic forests
In the early 1980s when I was working on the Jurassic fossil forest of Curio Bay, near the bottom end of New Zealand’s South Island, it seemed clear that two main types of tree formed the forest canopy. There were two types of conifer foliage fossil around Curio Bay- one type had the fine, feather-like shoots like today’s matai,… Continue reading Palissya – mysterious cone of New Zealand’s Jurassic forests
Cladophlebis – New Zealand’s Mesozoic Weed
The fern Cladophlebis is probably the single-most common plant fossil in the New Zealand Jurassic. It’s present in virtually every plant fossil site of that age (see the Featured Image of this post), so much so that Mildenhall (1974) referred to it as ‘Mesozoic weed’. When New Zealanders talk about ‘fern rock’, it’s a good… Continue reading Cladophlebis – New Zealand’s Mesozoic Weed