> In a message dated 12/6/2009 5:57:27 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
>
> Andrew -
> NZ - are there any reefs atop the mountain ridges there ?  I know about
> the hiking path
> and was wandering if you have reef limestone still existing (if it ever
> did) after the great uplift!
> Might be some NZ Fossils thereabouts.

Hi Martin

Those Texas limestones are great... our Permian rocks are all
sandstones or sedimentary limestones, with poor fossils in the main.
NZ has no reef limestones, unfortunately. What fossil corals we have
are either solitary (plenty of those, both Paleozoic and Cenozoic) or
small colonies of ahermatypic (nonreefbuilding). Hermatypic
(reefbuilding) corals have been found at a wonderful new
barely-subtidal late Oligocene locality I'm now working on in the
southern South Island, but so far only fragments of what are probably
very small colonies have been found... at least they give us a
definite marginal-tropical paleotemperature; previously our late
oligocene was thought to be warm-temperate, though from the molluscs
I'd long thought that the then-climate must have been far warmer than
that... nice to have my feeling confirmed.

The NZ Southern Alps are being uplifted extremely rapidly and erosion
isn't keeping pace... there are old beaches at 2000m above the SW
coast of the South Island with shells of living species just lying
around, though I haven't been there.


--
Regards
Andrew Grebneff
Dunedin
New Zealand
Fossil preparator
Mollusc, Toyota & VW van fan

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