Ancient seabird fossils found from New Zealand
06 May 2008
On a remote stretch of beach on the Chatham Islands, researchers have unearthed the oldest known bird fossils from New Zealand.
The fossils represent possibly four new species of seabirds dating back to the late Cretaceous period, around 65 million years ago.
Other remains from the same blocks of fossil-laden sandstone suggest that the birds co-existed with marine and terrestrial dinosaurs.
Excavation leader Jeffrey Stillwell of Monash University (Australia) found the fossil trove along a two kilometre stretch of rugged shoreline on the main Chatham Island, which sits more than 800km east of Christchurch.
Storms had washed sand away from a rocky platform on Maunganui Beach, revealing a wealth of bones from the Cretaceous, when New Zealand first separated from the ancient super-continent of Gondwana.
''This is New Zealand's oldest fossil aviary, and it has implications for the origin of modern seabirds. It's quite spectacular to have that many birds in one deposit,'' said Stilwell.
The researcher whose work was funded by the National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration says the fossils seemed to resemble modern seabirds known as cormorants.
''They look very tall and slender,'' he said. ''We have one little guy who was probably no more than 30 centimeters high.''
However, the excavation also uncovered bones that are too large to belong to birds, including what could be the big toe from a two-legged carnivorous dinosaur known as a theropod.
Pioneer paleontologist Joan Wiffen who discovered the first evidence of dinosaurs in New Zealand in the 1970s near Hawke's Bay said that any information on Cretaceous birds would be new, because the fragility of bird bones means that they are very poorly represented in the fossil record.
''It's also great to have a second dinosaur site in New Zealand, so we can get a better understanding of what conditions were like,'' said Wiffen.
In particular, excavation leader Stilwell is hoping that the new fossils can provide more evidence for land bridges between the Chatham Islands and mainland New Zealand.
"The dinosaurs and birds needed land, so they were probably living and breeding and dying fairly close by," he said.
About 80 to 85 million years ago a densely forested land bridge is believed to have spanned the Chatham Islands and present-day Banks Peninsula on the South Island.
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