Gallery
These photos are from my Instagram feed and get updated every week.
Big fossil whale bone! 🐋 The rain was too heavy for a fossil hunt but still managed to get a bit of whale skull! This was dredged up from 1000m deep and is fully fossilized. It was dropped off today by Pete and is in great condition! It measures 700mm in length and is very solid. Some cool foramen and other features are visible, I'll have to try and figure out what their proper names are. It doesnt look to have suffered much bioerosion which sometimes happen with these bones from the depths. Bioerosion in bone is when organisms start breaking it down which leads to a loss of detail. Thanks for the amazing gift Pete! Edit: looks like its a beaked whale 🤩🤩🤩
First cut with my lapidary saw I have been fixing up. Super smooth cut! It should polish up really easily! Its amazing how solidly built this little 10" saw is. It has a power feed which gives a really consistent finish. I have some petrified wood I've been wanting to cut as well as a couple of damaged nautiloids 🤞
Swipe to see the end result... my first cetacean tooth and its a chunky one! I found it exploring one day but it was too fragile to remove so I came back with some consolidant to strengthen it. Age wise, I think it is Oligocene. As for the species, I'm not sure 🤔 maybe someone out there knows? It has two cusps on the one side, but none on the other. I donated it to Te Papa and will update as soon as they come back with some more info.
I don't often find shark teeth so every one gets me excited, even if the root is broken 😆 this one had fallen into a tiny crevice and I happened to spot it as I walked past. Not sure on the species at all.
A beautiful piece of petrified wood still in the rock matrix 🤩 it might be as old as Cretaceous, I'm a bit unsure of the area still. It extends about 20cm into the rock and I managed to get it home. I'll be sending it to someone at Otago Uni that is studying South Island petrified wood if he will have it 😄
Beautiful nautiloid chambers 🤩 they look to be filled with calcite or some other mineral and there is still quite a bit of shine to the shell. I've tried prepping one of these before and it was a real challenge as the shell was quite broken. I had to consolidate it every step of the way 😀
A big section of whale skull and ear bone I found yesterday 🐳 its a beautiful piece of bone, smooth and dense. I'll get someone from the museum to take a look at it in case its something they are interested in.
A very smooth chalcedony pebble I found in the mountains of South Canterbury, maybe a gastrolith from a bird such as a Moa 🤔 All the other rocks in the area were jagged and unrounded so this one really stood out.
Tooth or claw? I found a large bone cluster that I managed to get home with the help of @paleo_craig and found what looks like a tooth or claw next to some of the exposed bone. Does it look familiar to anyone? Its a mid-Miocene ocean deposit.
A few nice bits of petrified wood I found today, it only took me 5 hours of searching 😆 The wood has been replaced by silica and it will take a really good polish. I was hoping to find a complete round today but wasn't to be. It was a great day of exploring and scratching around 😀
Soaking wet but very happy with this bone block I found! @paleo_craig and I braved the storm to see what was being washed up and found a few bits and pieces. Amazing colours in the bone, oranges and blacks and everything in between. It must have been from quite a large animal... whale, dolphin? Maybe even a seal. There's not all that much left but might be worth a bit of a prep.
Zoom and enhance! Here's quite an interesting fossil from a deep water Miocene area. It appears to be some plant material which resembles a conifer cone. You can make out what looks like some cell structure at 40x zoom, thanks to @paleo_craig for spotting it. The current theory is that there is a thin layer of carbon material left underneath some infill which has preserved the cell structure 🤩 This is the first potentially terrestrial plant material I have found at this site. Swipe to zoom out.
Progress on my fossil whale jigsaw puzzle 😆 its sitting at 250kg so far (550lbs) and it's still missing two parts that I can see. It contains the back part of a whale skull including the very diagnostic ear bones. It could help shed some light on the Mid Miocene whale species that were around New Zealand. I think I have 5 partial whale skulls in my garden now 🤣
A beautiful section of agatized bone I found on the beach yesterday. Possible something like a dolphin or whale. The bone has been replaced with minerals and perhaps something quite silica rich in this instance. It was glowing amongst all the bits of stone 🤩
And the winner of this cool little Pulalius crab is @seanylc 😀 thanks everyone for entering, I was blown away by the response! I'll have to do another giveaway soon! @seanylc I've sent you a DM to organize the shipping.
@paleo_craig spotted this concretion in amongst my collection and identified it as a huge amount of foraminifera (forams) 😯 They are tiny single cell creatures that live throughout the oceans and other bodies of water... I thought they were just tiny shells 😂 Forams can be used to get an idea of the age of an area which could be very useful as there isn't too much info available about the area where I found it.
A beautiful piece of fossil cetacean (probably whale) I found a couple of hours ago. The cancellous tissue (honeycombing) seems to have been filled with some type of mineral. It still has a bit of host rock attached to it. It's probably Miocene in age.
Fossil crab giveaway! 🦀🦀🦀 I'm giving this small Pulalius vulgaris crab away that I finished prepping last night, video will be out in 5 hours on my YouTube channel (link in my bio). To enter: 1. Tag two people in the post, both in the same comment 2. Like the post 3. Make sure you are following me on Instagram Enter as many times as you like but please only tag people that might enjoy posts about fossils 🦕🦖🦀 I'll draw the winner in a week by selecting a random comment and ship it to you free of charge.
Wasn't going for a ventral (bottom of the crab) prep but it's a bit of a gamble when nothing of the crab is visible 😄 this is a small Pulalius vulgaris from Washington state a friend sent me to prep. 🦀
Some close-ups of two of the bone blocks I carried back which looks to contain the back part of a whale skull. They were about 5 meters apart but look to fit together quite well. One of the blocks have the earbones still in position 😀 they weigh 102kg (220lbs) together, hopefully the other half of it is still out there somewhere 🤞