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DINOSAURS!

Our property at Maungataniwha is of national importance geologically as the site where palaeontologist Joan Wiffen first discovered evidence of land-dinosaur fossils in New Zealand. These fossil remains were extracted from cretaceous rock taken from the Mangahouanga Stream, which has the bulk of its catchment within this forest. 

It continues to reveal a trove of fossilised riches; in June 2014 walkers stumbled across the fossil of an unusually large ammonite, a squid-like animal that lived in the sea during the time of the dinosaurs. And in March 2015 the fossilised jaw of a mosasaur was found there.

 

If any one place is the epicentre of New Zealand palaeontology, Maungataniwha is probably it.

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