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. 

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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.