St Bathans Fauna
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Artist's impression of the Miocene landscape of Aotearoa New Zealand’s South Island
The Bronze Age Middle Eastern Pastoralists who made up the Hebrew origin myths could have known nothing about a southern hemisphere, let alone archipelagoes like New Zealand (or to give the name that more accurately reflects its dual cultures, Māori and European, Aotearoa New Zealand) and they knew nothing of the rich history of Earth's wildlife, so they said not a word about it in their mythology.
So, we have the ludicrous situation where a sizable proportion of people - especially Americans - think nothing older than about 10,000 years and nothing that wasn't known to parochial Middle Eastern pastoralists, ever existed, despite the abundant evidence that it did and that it had ancestors very much older.
What information do you have on the St* Bathan's fauna found in the Bannockburn Formation on New Zealand's South Island?
The St. Bathans Fauna is a remarkable fossil assemblage from the Early Miocene (around 19-16 million years ago) found in the Bannockburn Formation in New Zealand's South Island. Discovered near the small town of St. Bathans, this fossil site is part of the Manuherikia Group, which is known for providing a window into New Zealand's unique prehistoric ecosystem.
Here’s a detailed overview of the St. Bathans fauna and its significance:
- Paleontological Importance
- The fossils represent a critical period when New Zealand was transitioning from being an isolated landmass with its own flora and fauna. This period is significant for the evolution of New Zealand's unique species after it split from Gondwana.
- The St. Bathans Fauna provides insights into how climate change affected New Zealand's environment and species during the Miocene epoch. At that time, the region was much warmer and covered with subtropical forests and wetlands, a stark contrast to the cooler, drier conditions that followed in the Pliocene and Pleistocene.
- Vertebrate Fossils
- Birds: The site is most famous for its extensive and diverse avian fossil record. Notable examples include:
- The giant flightless bird species similar to moa (though these are not the moa we are familiar with).
- Ancient species of waterfowl, shorebirds, and parrots, some of which are now extinct.
- Fossils of a possible heron species, various songbirds, and even a previously unknown eagle.
- Mammals: Mammal fossils in New Zealand are rare, but the St. Bathans site yielded intriguing examples of early mammals. These include:
- A small, shrew-like mammal (perhaps representing one of the only land mammals known in New Zealand before humans introduced others).
- Marsupial fossils that hint at a lineage distinct from modern marsupials in Australasia.
- Reptiles: Various lizard and possible gecko remains have been found, along with fossils that may represent tuatara ancestors.
- Fish: Several species of freshwater fish, especially primitive forms such as galaxiids, have been found, showing that New Zealand's fish diversity extended back tens of millions of years.
- Flora
- Plant fossils from the same region indicate that the Miocene landscape was densely vegetated with subtropical and temperate plants, including ferns, conifers, and flowering plants. The existence of forests and wetlands provided ideal habitats for the wide variety of animals found there.
- Significance for Climate and Ecological Studies
- The St. Bathans fauna gives researchers a clear picture of what New Zealand's environment was like during a warmer period of Earth's history, making it invaluable for studies on climate change and its impact on ecosystems over time.
- It shows a diversity of life forms that existed before the drastic cooling in the Pliocene, which led to the extinction of several species.
- Unique Species
- One of the notable discoveries includes a species dubbed the "St. Bathans mammal," which is a mysterious, small mammal species. New Zealand is generally known for its lack of native land mammals, but this discovery suggests that mammals may have once been present in ancient New Zealand, challenging previous assumptions.
- Bird species found in the Bannockburn Formation are also unique, some showing traits that link them to extinct lineages or suggest evolutionary connections with species outside New Zealand.
The St. Bathans fossil site continues to be a rich source of paleontological discovery, providing ongoing insights into the Miocene ecosystems of New Zealand and the biogeographical history of its fauna and flora.
For example, palaeontologists are discovering more fossils of the so-called St Bathan's fauna that charcterised Aotearoa New Zealand's South Island, most of which are of extinct species. These are being found in rocks known as the Bannockburn Formation that formed in an ancient lake by a team led by Associate Professor Trevor Worthy of Flinders University, Australia and including Dr Paul Scofield, senior curator of natural history, Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. They have recently published their findings, open access, in the journal
Geobios:
Kākāpō are the true ancient species of Aotearoa New Zealand
Aotearoa New Zealand’s true ancient species are animals like Kākāpō, small wrens, bats and freshwater limpets, not recent Aussie immigrants like kiwi, moa and takahē.
This is the conclusion reached by an international team of palaeontologists after two decades of groundbreaking research at the St Bathans fossil site in Central Otago recently published in Geobios.
The team, including Canterbury Museum Senior Curator Natural History Dr Paul Scofield, have been excavating the large St Bathans site since 2001, uncovering thousands of fossil bones. The site, which was once at the bottom of a large prehistoric lake, offers the only significant insight into Aotearoa‘s non-marine wildlife from 20 million years ago.
The new research summarises the extraordinary creatures discovered in the more than 9,000 specimens collected across 23 years. Exotic creatures identified at the site include a giant parrot that the scientists nicknamed “Squawkzilla”, two mystery mammals, flamingos, a 3-metre crocodile, a giant horned turtle and a giant bat.
Reconstruction of the 1m tall giant parrot
Heracles inexpectatus, dwarfing a bevy of 8 cm high
Kuiornis – small New Zealand wrens scuttling about on the forest floor.
Illustration: Dr Brian Choo, Flinders University.
Many of the species that we thought of as iconic New Zealand natives – a classic example would be the takahē – we now know are relatively recent blow-ins from Australia, arriving only a few million years ago. Twenty-three years of digging at St Bathans has changed our idea about the age of the New Zealand fauna and the importance of some animals over others. For example, until now we thought that birds like kiwi and moa were among the oldest representatives of New Zealand fauna. We are now realising that the Kākāpō, tiny New Zealand wrens and bats, and even a bizarre freshwater limpet, are the real ancient New Zealand natives.
Dr Paul Scofield, co-author
Canterbury Museum
Christchurch, New Zealand
The research concludes that this menagerie of exotic animals was wiped out by dramatic temperature drops over the last about 5 million years.
Lead author Flinders University Associate Professor Trevor Worthy said 23 years of research at St Bathans had transformed our understanding of how non-marine vertebrate life in New Zealand looked around 20 million years ago during the Early Miocene era.
It’s exciting to be involved in a project that continues to make absolutely fresh discoveries about what animals lived in New Zealand’s lakes and rivers, and the forests around them, during this critical period in history. Every year we find new specimens. Finds that reveal amazing new species that we couldn’t have imagined when we first started working there.
Associate Professor Trevor H. Worthy, lead author
College of Science and Engineering
Flinders University
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Study co-author Dr Vanesa De Pietri of the University of Canterbury said the animals that lived in New Zealand 20 million years ago were very different to what we have now.
For example, we had another giant eagle that was not related to Haast’s Eagle. We had a whole bunch of songbirds that were quite different, crocodiles and even potentially a small mammal that we’ve nicknamed the waddling mouse. We are still in the middle of our research into understanding exactly what that was.
Dr Vanesa L. De Pietri, co-author
School of Earth and Environment
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand.
The latest research paper was a collaboration between Flinders University, Canterbury Museum, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha University of Canterbury, The University of Queensland, University of Copenhagen and University of New South Wales.
Abstract
The St Bathans Fauna, from sites near the village of St Bathans, Central Otago, South Island, is the first substantive pre-Quaternary terrestrial vertebrate fossil fauna discovered in New Zealand. This fauna derives from 33 sites or discrete sedimentary beds located in the lower 50 m of the lacustrine Bannockburn Formation, Manuherikia Group, and is generally accepted as local stage Altonian (19–15.9 Ma; Burdigalian, Early Miocene) in age. Investigations since 2001 have revealed an abundant and diverse fauna from over 9000 catalogued lots that is herein reviewed. Invertebrates notably include eight genera and species of terrestrial molluscs. Among vertebrates, freshwater fish remains dominate with 17 species evidenced by 16,500 analysed otoliths (genera Neochanna, Galaxias, Prototroctes, and Mataichthys) and many thousands of bones. Birds (minimally 45 species, several thousand bones) are the most common non-fish vertebrates, among which waterfowls dominate all assemblages (10 species). Co-occurring with these was a diverse herpetofauna, including undetermined crocodylians and a terrestrial turtle, both absent in Recent faunas. Significantly, the St Bathans Fauna evidences that Zealandia already had all of New Zealand’s ‘old’ endemic Recent taxa (sphenodontids, leiopelmatids, dinornithiforms, apterygids, aptornithids, strigopoid parrots, acanthisittids, and mystacinids) during the Early Miocene. Furthermore, it includes Australasia’s oldest ardeids, two flightless rallids, a novel higher landbird family, a greater diversity of bats, and terrestrial mammals. All sites reflect a single fauna, except that the ducks Manuherikia lacustrina (stratigraphically lower in section) and M. primadividua (higher) have a mutually exclusive distribution that is not yet correlated with any other biotic distribution differences.
1. Introduction
New Zealand is a small emergent part of the India-sized continent of Zealandia that is largely submerged and from which New Caledonia, Lord Howe, Norfolk Island, the Chatham Islands, and the New Zealand subantarctic islands all project (Mortimer et al., 2017, Strogen et al., 2023). The New Zealand archipelago includes 800+ islands >1 ha, totalling 270,000 km2, of which North Island (114,740 km2) and South Island (151,120 km2) are the largest. Mainland New Zealand (North and South islands) averages ca. 2000 km from Australia.
Seafloor-spreading that initiated 85–80 Ma in the south of the present Tasman Sea gradually rifted the new continent Zealandia from Eastern Gondwana, with rifting complete in the north by 60–55 Ma (Gaina et al., 1998, Schellart et al., 2006). The recent reconstructions by Strogen et al. (2023) developed these early models and in addition have a focus on land on Zealandia. They show Zealandia became fully separated from the Australian part of East Gondwana ca. 57 Ma although land connections had already been severed in the preceding few million years (Strogen et al., 2023). Thereafter, land area was progressively reduced, as the continent submerged, until the Late Oligocene marine highstand when ∼150,000 km2 remained (Strogen et al., 2023). Subsequently, land area increased, especially after the Australia–Pacific plate boundary migrated from its mid-Tasman Sea spreading centre to become propagated through New Zealand during the Early Miocene ∼18–16 Ma forming the Alpine Fault and resulting in regional uplift.
If only the authors of Genesis had been a little better informed about the real world and its history, they could have come up with at least a half plausible creation myth by including some of the fauna from distant lands from millions of years ago, even if they felt they had to include magic to explain a world they thought ran on it.
As it was, their parochial ignorance was about the worst imaginable preparation for the task, hence the laughable result that could only be believed by someone at least as parochially ignorant as they were.
