In the Jurassic you could have walked from what is now the fossil forest at Curio Bay in southernmost New Zealand (see featured image), to Australia, or Antarctica. Both continents were then part of Gondwana, and Curio Bay was somewhere near Gondwana’s coast. Did dinosaurs… Read more
All posts tagged “New Zealand paleobotany”
What latitude did the Jurassic Fossil Forest of Curio Bay grow at?
The Jurassic fossil forest of Curio Bay today lies almost at the southern tip of New Zealand’s South Island. In the Jurassic, you could have walked from Curio Bay to what is now Australia and Antarctica (Dinosaurs may have done just that). We know from… Read more
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
How Tall were the trees in New Zealand’s Jurassic Fossil Forest at Curio Bay?
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… Read more
New Zealand’s Hawks Crag Breccia – prelude to the drift from Gondwana
The New Zealand road network has some seriously quirky idiosyncrasies – little things we locals take for granted, but can cause some alarm to the ever-increasing number of tourists. There are, for example, hundreds of ‘one lane’ bridges. And about these, I was once asked,… 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 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… 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