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Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 212, 4 June 1929, Page 9

An interesting exhibit at the last meeting of the Auckland Institute and Mus-. eum Council was a fossil oyster shell Gin. • in width, and a cockle shell almost as large. They were found in a tertiary ; fossil bed near Oneroa Beach, Waiheke Island. Mr. A. W. B. Powell, conchologist to the Museum, who has been investigating the bed in co-operation with; Professor J. A. Bartrum, of the University College, said the existence of the bed was reported in 1927 by Mr. E. W. Tetley, a biology student at the college. Seventy-six different species of molluscs, of which 70 were now extinct, had been .< found, and 46 of them were new to science. Mr. Powell added that the large oyster, of which the Museum now had a;; specimen, existed long before the advent' of man on the earth. He was not pre-?; pared to state whether this fact had any-.; thing to do with its extinction.