SHELL FOSSILS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 230, 29 September 1933, Page 2

SHELL FOSSILS.

ADDRESS AT MUSEUM. Information on shell fossils, in a form a layman could understand, was given to a large audience on Wednesday by Mr. A. W. P. Towell, conchologist at the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The lecture was one under the auspices of the New Zealand Institute, and Professor H. W. Segar was chairman.

Mr. Powell gave an account of a trip he had made recently to the east coast of the North Island,*! - the purpose of collecting shellfish fossils. "It is well known," he said, "that that coastal area has been uplifted from the sea-bottom, and all road cuttings are rich in fossil remains." Originally the inner harbour of Napier, of papa-rock, was on the ocean floor in about 30 fathoms of water. It had been warped up from that depth to present sea level. The whole of the East Coast was what was called an anticline. It was like a big fold that Md been forced up by pressure on the one hand from the hard sea bottom, and on the other by the hard central rocks of the mountain system. After the 1931 earthquake, said Mr. Powell, a largo part of the inner harbour at Napier, some five square miles, was dry land, and the area at the foot of the cliffs for that reason was readily accessible for fossil research. The a»e*of Hawke's Bay was about 30,000,000 "years.

On information given by Mr. Ernest Kemp, of Cape Runaway, Mr. Powell visited an outcropping between Cape Runaway and Hicks Bay. The fossils there were in a remarkable state of preservation. They had their original strength, and the colour bands were frtill present as when they had lived half a million years ago.

An address on field work at Manga - toki, dealing with Maori remains, was given by Air. V. F, Eisher, assistant ethnologist at the Museum,