The white sands and muds surrounding Blue and ‘Grey’ Lakes at St Bathans were laid down in a braided river (Manuherikia Group; Douglas 1986). About twenty million years ago, in the Miocene period, It was flowing from the New Zealand hinterland in the west to the east coast. Braided rivers are constantly changing their channels,… Continue reading Miocene Swamp Forests of St Bathans, New Zealand
Tag: New Zealand
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
Interdistributary drifters – a Miocene bay in New Zealand
One of the more evocative Miocene fossils you might pick up near Bannockburn, New Zealand, are she-oak ‘cones’ (see the featured image). The Latin name is Casuarina (but see ‘Technical Details’, below). This is a plant that no-longer grows naturally in New Zealand, but is a tree in much of Australia. It’s cones, and sometimes its brush-like foliage,… Continue reading Interdistributary drifters – a Miocene bay in New Zealand
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
Blue Lake, St Bathans – the most biodiverse Miocene fossil plant locality
The biodiversity of Blue Lake, at St Bathans, New Zealand, is precisely zero. It is an artificial lake partly filling a hole blasted out in the search for gold in the 19th century. The hole is directly in front of one of St Bathan’s and New Zealand’s gems – the Vulcan Hotel. If you ran out… Continue reading Blue Lake, St Bathans – the most biodiverse Miocene fossil plant locality
Giant Pea Pod fossils in New Zealand’s Miocene
Pea pod fossils in New Zealand were first found by Aline Holden, a pioneer of New Zealand plant fossil research. She found the first ones at Bannockburn in 1981, while working on her PhD, and then found more in the Nevis Valley. In 1987, my PhD professor, J.D. Campbell and his wife, Anne, dropped in… Continue reading Giant Pea Pod fossils in New Zealand’s Miocene
Hoop Pine fossils – dry rainforest in New Zealand’s Miocene
In a little patch of shale, continually flaking onto the road near Bannockburn (central South Island, New Zealand), there are the unmistakable fossils like Australian ‘hoop pine’ shoots. Hoop pines are members of the tree family which includes ‘monkey puzzles’, ‘bunyas’ and the ‘Norfolk Island Pines’. The Latin name is Araucaria – New Zealand has none of… Continue reading Hoop Pine fossils – dry rainforest in New Zealand’s Miocene
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
Five Degrees of Global Warming – The Leaf Fossils of Kakahu, New Zealand
Sometime in the 1980s my Prof, ‘JDC’ (Doug Campbell of the Otago University), showed me a box of spectacular leaf fossils that had been collected from Kakahu by Graeme Mason while “out rabbiting”. Kakahu is a farming district in the hills, a few kilometres out of Geraldine, in New Zealand. Leaf fossils had been known… Continue reading Five Degrees of Global Warming – The Leaf Fossils of Kakahu, New Zealand
The Giant ‘Lake Manuherikia’ – an extinct lake from the New Zealand Miocene
Alexandra lies at the junction of the Clutha and Manuherikia Rivers. The usual translation of the Maori word ‘Manuherikia’ is that it means something like “cry of a tied bird” and records a scout tying a weka (a bird) to a stake to mark the crossing point of that river (Reed Dictionary of NZ Maori Place… Continue reading The Giant ‘Lake Manuherikia’ – an extinct lake from the New Zealand Miocene