Fossil treasure trove from Auckland’s Mangere Wastewater Therapy Plant

In 2020, when Auckland’s Watercare have been excavating two large vertical shafts for a serious improve of the foremost pipeline that brings uncooked sewage for therapy from the central metropolis they dug by an historical shell mattress. Auckland paleontologist Bruce Hayward likened it to “discovering gold proper in your door step.” As soon as they have been knowledgeable of the fossil deposit’s significance, Watercare and their contractors have been keen to assist and an enormous heap of shelly sand was dumped in a close-by paddock in order that paleontologists might search by it over many months. Watercare additionally funded two paleontology graduate college students, working below the supervision of Auckland Museum curator Dr Wilma Blom, to painstakingly sift by the heap for a lot of weeks. Because of this, it’s estimated that over 300,000 fossils have been examined and a number of other thousand have been returned within the museum as a report of this “once-in-a-lifetime discover.”

“Detailed identification of the fossils exhibits that they have been deposited between 3 and three.7 million years in the past in a subtidal channel in an early model of the trendy Manukau Harbour,” mentioned Dr Hayward. “At the moment, sea degree was barely larger than it’s as we speak because the world was additionally a number of levels hotter than now. Because of this, the fossils embody quite a few subtropical species, whose relations as we speak stay within the hotter waters across the Kermadec and Norfolk islands. At the least ten beforehand unknown species are current and can be described and named in future work.”

Of their scientific paper that appeared this week within the New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics, the 5 authors report 266 totally different fossil species, making it the richest and most numerous fauna of its age ever present in New Zealand. “What’s stunning,” says lead creator Dr Hayward “is that the fauna accommodates fossils that lived in many various environments which have been introduced collectively within the historical marine channel by wave motion and powerful tidal currents. It contains ten specimens of the long-lasting NZ flax snail that should have lived on the adjoining land and been washed down into the ocean by storm runoff. These are by far the oldest identified flax snails on the earth. Many of the fossils lived on the ocean ground, some in brackish estuaries, others hooked up to exhausting rocky shorelines and nonetheless extra have been carried in from offshore of the uncovered west coast on the time.”

“Uncommon finds have included remoted baleen whale vertebrae, a damaged sperm whale tooth, the backbone of an extinct sawshark, dental plates of eagle rays and quite a few nice white shark enamel.” The work has been devoted to Dr Alan Beu, New Zealand’s main molluscan fossil knowledgeable, who was engaged on the fossils when he handed away earlier this 12 months.