Gallery
These photos are from my Instagram feed and get updated every week.
I went to a new Oligocene spot and found this bit of wood embedded in the rock, it's more than a meter long and looks to be hollow. Maybe it was just the bark? 🤔
Out for a walk on the beach and stumbled across this beautiful piece of petrified wood 😁 maybe there are other fossils around as well 🤔
The area I was in today had fossil leaves all over the place! Some really large ones as well with beautiful detail. Wonder how they all ended up together like this 🤔 There was a coal seam nearby as well.
I've taken over the kitchen with my fossils 😁 I'm baking these chunks of greensand someone had left behind for a couple of days to break it down and then sifting out the coral and hopefully find some shark teeth 🤞 swipe to see the first batch of sifted sand. Video of it coming out soon!
I keep finding the smallest shark teeth 😂 have a look at this tiny cretaceous tooth, it is only a couple of millimeters big! Beautiful tiny crisps on it, swipe to see it's true size. Anyone know the species? 🤔
Cretaceous vert! I'm guessing plesiosaur by the lack of a concave side. This is my biggest one yet, it must have been quite beast of a plesiosaur 😁 I had a great day out with @jordonz_gemz. It's always fun to hunt with such enthusiastic people!
An impressive section of whale skull I helped @alanalbatross and a few others from @te_papa get off the beach today. It came in at 68.7kg (150lbs) and has some ear bones showing on both sides 🤩 It's going to be shipped off to Wellington soon and hopefully we will see the prepped results in a few months!
I might have found a cetacean earbone or skull element. It has that really dense look to it 🤔 it was a beautiful morning down at the beach this morning and it was good to stretch my legs a bit!
A productive evening spent cataloging my finds, it's so easy to fall behind! I put a layer of paraloid on, then some titanium oxide based paint for extra contrast if needed and finally I write the number on using India ink and a dipping pen. Check out my website to see my online collection grow. Mamlambofossils.com 😁
I'm back to working on this suspected ear bone I found earlier in the year. Im removing some more of the rock before I remove the remaining bits with some acid. There looks to be a few skull elements left in the concretion as well 😁 Swipe to see the progress I made tonight in 2 hours. The concretion is mid-Miocene in age from Canterbury, New Zealand.
Biiiiig fossil retrieval! I found one of these large concretions containing some Cretaceous bone a while back and had to wait for the river to rise so I could float them down. Turns out there were two of these rocks in the river 😂 I tried to get them both back home, my poor little boat! I'm thinking some kind of limb bone? If anyone knows what it could be, please let me know. The full adventure is on YouTube and has quite a bit of drama 😂
What looks like a trilobite but is Miocene in age? If you know, please help me out 🤞 Found it inside a concretion today 🤔 I always get excited when I find something new from a location, especially something as tiny as this!
@shona23 and 7yr old Kaelyn sent me this amazing artwork! 🤩 thank you so much, they're already on display with my fossils. Love the Mamlambo taking on a life of it's own.
A fossil crab emerging from a cliff on the coast of New Zealand. You can see the legs sticking out on the right hand side and a bit of the exposed carapace. It should be a pretty easy prep, the rock covering it is nice and thin 😀
A cool little Miocene fossil crab I found at sunset tonight. It has the the thinnest layer of rock on it so should be an easy prep 😁
Challenging prep on the nautiloid, the shell is heavily fragmented so needs constant consolidation. Imagine broken eggshell and the air from the air scribe keeps blowing the bits away 😫 Swipe to see a few more pics of it.
The process of gluing back together a split concretion containing a very large Tumidocarcinus crab. The concretion weighs about 60kg (130lbs) and was found split in two after it had rolled out of the cliff. The crab has a really unique orange tint to it. I glue it back together so that it is easier to prep, it is very difficult to prep it first and then try and match all the piece up. In this case, half the carapace was on each side which would have made it impossible to prep. There is a good chance the leg tips will be present in some of the legs 😁
Found a cool little crayfish today. Amazing detail on that tail, I havent tried prepping one yet and they look really delicate. Might be worth trying acid on then. Has anyone had experience prepping a crab or crayfish with acid?
I see some shark verts sticking out 😀 found this the past weekend in pouring rain, made the soaking worthwhile. I really hope there are some teeth hiding in there as well!
Giveaway time on my YouTube channel. Go over to YouTube.com/mamlambo and watch the prep of this crab, subscribe and guess the weight of the prepped fossil to win it 😁