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
Tag: New Zealand Jurassic
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?
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