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Curio Bay

Petrified forest

Wide view of the petrified forest at Curio Bay, Catins Forest Park, New Zealand South Island

The images in this small collection feature the petrified forest at Curio Bay in the Catlins Forest Park, a remote coastal area at the south-eastern tip of New Zealand’s South Island. The tree fossils, which can be seen at low tide, date back to the Jurassic period and are approximately 170 million years old. Fossil forests of this age are rare; this is one of the most extensive and least disturbed in the world.

 

The forest was alive when New Zealand was part of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana and the Curio Bay area was a forested coastal flood plain. Consisting of cycads and conifers forming a low canopy over fern undergrowth, it grew in a semi-tropical climate, before grasses and flowering plants existed. It was buried by floods of volcanic debris, growing back at least four times over 20,000 years before remaining buried for millions of years. Silica minerals gradually impregnated the deeply-buried wood, turning it to stone and preserving fossilised fern fronds and leaves as well as tree stumps and wood.

 

Information from Te Papa Atawhai (New Zealand Department of Conservation)

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