IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Otago Witness, Issue 3614, 19 June 1923, Page 6

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

By

REPTILES OF LONG AGO.

J. Drummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S.

North Canterbury, as far south as the Kakaia River, coal rocks are overlaid largely by strata in which many fossils are found. Most of the fossils are extinct shellfish and cuttlefish, but in the Waipara district beds contain remains of reptiles that were members of the dominant race in a former world. Their graveyard at Waipara is known to palaeontologists as the saurian bed.-, a' name suggested by the presence, in sulphur sands and sulphur mudstones, of large concretions, in the form of boulders, containing fossil reptilian hones. In some of the concretions the fossils roach to the exterior, and seem to be water-worn. They often are encased by from sin to bin of impure limestone or by an envelope of a sandy calcareous material containing remains of seaweeds. Inside that envelope me concretion is a bard, greyish-blue limestone. Ihe fossils usually are near the centre, but when connected parts of reptiles are found the fossils sometimes go through the whole diameter of the concretion, and into the envelope that surrounds the harder central part.

From a high elifl on the left bank of the W aipara River, below its junction with the Purait Burn, fossil-bearing concretionary boulders often fall into the river’s channel, leaving embedded in nearby greensands onchalf of their envelopes. Other boulders may be seen in their original positions with, half of their envelopes torn off and with the concretion beneath quito round and smooth. In some cases the material that

forms a concretionary boulder has been insufficient to include ail the remains of a reptile. The result. i 3 that some of the bones were fractured or jointed, and those on the surface are polished as if the boulder bad been formed mechanically and had been transported to its position by running water. Other saurian beds containing many reptilian remains have been found at Amuri Bluff. Extinct reptiles also left their remains at Greenhills, Gore Bay, the Jed River, and the Upper Motunau —usually pronounced “Mutton-au”—and a single bone was found in concretionary beds in the Malvern Hills.

The most famous reptile of the group that lived in New Zealand then lias been given the title of Plesiosaurus. Its remains, found in many countries, show that it was a cosmopolitan, or almost one. It was a marine reptile, equipped with four large paddles. Its head was small, its neck slender, and its length went up to 30ft. Its neck, which, in some cases, was about 15ft long, was stiff, not swan-like. The gape of its mouth was wide. Its jaws had a series of conical teeth in sockets, like those of the present gavial, a large crocodile found in Indian rivers. Each limb had live completo digits. The only traces of its skin discovered suggest that that was smooth. It fed on fish, cuttlefish, and other species of creatures in the seas, many of which, like Plesiosaurus, are extinct. Its highsounding title, which means, simply, “near the lizard,” was given by the Rev. W. D. Conybeare, of Llandatf, Wales, when its remains, found at Lyme-Regis, England, first, wero made known 102 years ago. The title was intended to show that this extinct reptile is much nearer present-day reptiles than is the equally famous Ichthyosaurus-fish-reptile—whose remains had been discovered a few years previously. Another

reptile that left its remains at-Waipara has been christened Cimoliosaurus, meaning the crocodilian reptile. Smaller than its great contemporary, it does not seem to have spread so far, but it also was a wanderer, having- its remains in New Zealand, North America, South America, and Europe. A third member of the group, Teleosaurus—“'perfect lizard”—had teefh that were slenderer and sharper than the gavial’s, with a smooth, cylindrical fang. A fourth member of the group bears the title Leiodon, “smooth tooth.” The saurian beds of Waipara have had an attraction for geologists and palaeontologists lor some 65 years. They wero discovered in 1859 by Mr T. PI. Cockburn Hood. His specimens, sent to the British Museum, were described by Sir R. Owen, who named the reptile that had owned the bones Plesiosaurus australis, the southern Plesiosaurus, and who placed them in the Jurassic Period, about the middle of the Mesozoic Era, when, probably, birds and mammals had come into the scheme of life, although all the mammals of those Mesozoic days were smail, rat-like and insignificant. This discovery led local fossil-hunters to the Waipara. Sir Julius Von llaast, in 1864, found a. cup-shaped polvzoa, which he mistook for the vertebra of a Plesiosaurus. Cockburn Blood made another good collection of reptilian fossils there. They were lost on their way to England in the wreck of the Matoaka.. In the same year, 1868, Mr R. L. Holmes, for the Wellington Museum, collected a good series of reptilian fossils. From drawings of them Sir R. Owen identified two new species of Plesiosaurus.

Mr A. M‘Kay, mainly for Canterbury Museum, made about six collecting visits to the district, the last in 1892. No col-

lections have been made since that year, but part of a reptile's jaw with teeth was found by Dr J. A. Thomson, director of the Dominion Museum, Wellington, in 1913, at the junction of the Waipara River and Birch Hollow. All accessible specimens, apparently, have been taken, and further collections must incur much labour and expense. Although a good collection could be made in Birch Hollow Gorge, Dr Thomson states that the transport difficulties are serious, as the sides of the gorge form sandy cliffs almost 200 ft high, and the bottom is choked for more than a mile by fallen beech trees and large boulders.

“Being interested in birds, for years we have kept no cat, and we wage war on any wild ones prowling near,” Mrs A. H. Puckey wrote from Kairaia, North Auckland, on May 14: ‘‘and having a willowbordered garden full of fruit-trees, climbing plants, and ornamental trees and shrubs, many little birds reward us with their presence. Fantails flutter in and out of the house, catching flies, and twittering to their reflections in the mirrors. Blight birds, or white eyes, as they are sometimes called, suck honey from flowers, seek insects, and eat berries on shrubs growing against our dining-room windows, while we are breakfasting not two yards away. Goldfinches eat. the cosmos seeds, riroriros or grey warblers, sing to us, and cuckoos’ or pipiwharauroas, stay with us throughout the season. The cuckoos feed largely on tho black and white, magpie moth, and its beautiful little ‘woolly bear’ caterpillars which we find in thousands on a creeper growing here, called Cape ivy or mile-a-minute. They feed also on tho leech—fruit-growers note! —searching for them even on a plum tree that spreads its branches into our back porch. During the summer, we sometimes seo one ouokoo feeding another,

whether it.*’ mate or a fully fledged young one we do not know. Perhaps one of your readers may. One perches crossly on a willow branch, giving discontented little squeaks, while the other plies it with ‘woolly bears" —a dozen in as many minutes. I think the little gourmand must be a young bird else why the hunger? Can you enlighten me?” | “The fern-bird, matata, or toe-(oe. is I mentioned in yur column at long intervals, and often is thought to be extinct.” Mr P. Dee writes from Okoroire, Matamata County (Auekiand) Province. “I found a nest once about three inches from tho ground. In the spring, the male loses a good deal of his timidity. He may be soon climbing up sticks or raupo stems with little runs, like a mouse his tail being bent towards the stem. This species is hard io find because two birds often are together and take up the Titick’ note alternately, making Ihe sound close one minute nnd several yards away the next.”