Scientist Charles Fleming looks over a collection of fossils. A versatile scientist, Fleming became chief palaeontologist of the Geological Survey in Wellington in 1952 and specialised in studying living and fossil molluscs. Listen to Fleming explain why there are few terrestrial fossil deposits in New Zealand.
Transcript
In Africa there are rich beds of vertebrates in the interval before the breakup of Gondwanaland. Here in New Zealand we have very few animal fossils. Partly or perhaps chiefly because we've always had enough rainfall to give peaty, acid soils and these are the worst conditions for preservation of bone. We know now that there was at least one dinosaur kind of dinosaur in New Zealand probably there were many more. But in New Zealand we have a very, very good record for the same reason, because we have peaty deposits in which they preserve, very good evidence of the vegetation that was in New Zealand just before Gondwanaland broke up.
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Reference: SL48/47
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