An academic asks ChatGPT about New Zealand’s Miocene Manuherikia Group Your narrator dips his toes into this ChatGPT thing With a nod to Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians – ‘I know what I know, if you know what I mean’. One subject where I’m… Read more
All posts tagged “Miocene”
New Zealand’s first fossil horsetails in millions of years
With the precious fossils laid out carefully on a sun-hat held in my hands, I took a confident stride from one boulder to the next. And slipped. My left knee cap took the full impact of my body on another boulder, about a meter down.… Read more
Phyllocladus fossils from the Miocene of New Zealand, and Cretaceous Protophyllocladus
A rare plant fossil in the Miocene Manuherikia Group of New Zealand, is Phyllocladus (the Celery Pine). This is a strange conifer which, instead of leaves, the adult plant has multi-veined flattened branches that are called phylloclades. With these phylloclades, the average person would scarcely believe Phyllocladus is… Read more
The Amazing Miocene Fossil Leaf Pack of Mata Creek, New Zealand
I was crouched in a long boat somewhere up a rainforest-swathed river in Kalimatan, Borneo, when I saw it – a ‘living’ example of a fossil leaf pack I had once seen in New Zealand. Several years before, I had been exploring down a little… Read more
Miocene Rain and Fire Forests of Bannockburn
Canungra is the perfect place to stop for a snack on the drive up to O’Reilly’s/Lamington National Park in southeastern Queensland. On a weekend you can grab a latte and pie and sit outside a cafe, watching the biker crowd doing pretty much the same… Read more
Miocene Swamp Forests of St Bathans, New Zealand
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… Read more
New Zealand’s Rata and Pohutakawa – riders of the Miocene storms?
There is a Maori legend than when one of their ancestral canoes (the Te Arawa) approached New Zealand after traveling from its Pacific homeland, its crew saw the trees along the coast covered in red. Thinking these were abundant red-feathered birds, a chief thew away his priceless… Read more
Miocene Nothofagus in New Zealand’s Manuherikia Group
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Nothofagus leaf fossils in New Zealand is – not finding them. Nothofagus is another name for the southern beech trees that form forests in New Zealand, as well as Australia, Patagonia, New Caledonia and New Guinea. As a group, the beeches are… Read more
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… Read more
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… Read more