Curio Bay is a coastal embayment in the

Southland District Southland District is a Districts of New Zealand, territorial authority district in New Zealand that covers the south of the South Island as well as Stewart Island, Stewart Island/Rakiura. History Southland District was formed through the 1989 lo ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

, best known as the site of a

petrified forest Petrified wood, also known as petrified tree (from Ancient Greek meaning 'rock' or 'stone'; literally 'wood turned into stone'), is the name given to a special type of '' fossilized wood'', the fossilized remains of terrestrial vegetation. ' ...

some 180 million years old. It also hosts a

yellow-eyed penguin The yellow-eyed penguin (''Megadyptes antipodes''), known also as hoiho or tarakaka, is a species of penguin endemic to New Zealand. Previously thought closely related to the little penguin (''Eudyptula minor''), molecular research has shown it ...

colony, arguably the rarest of penguin species, with approximately 1600 breeding pairs in the extant population. The bay, along with neighbouring Porpoise Bay, is home to the endemic

Hector's dolphin Hector's dolphin (''Cephalorhynchus hectori'') is one of four dolphin species belonging to the genus '' Cephalorhynchus''. Hector's dolphin is the only cetacean endemic to New Zealand, and comprises two subspecies: ''C. h. hectori'', the more n ...

. Southern right whales are occasionally observed offshore, as on numerous parts of the country's coast. Located near the southernmost point of the

South Island The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman ...

, Curio Bay is one of the major attractions in

the Catlins The Catlins (sometimes referred to as The Catlins Coast) comprises an area in the southeastern corner of the South Island of New Zealand. The area lies between Balclutha and Invercargill, straddling the boundary between the Otago and Southlan ...

, attracting around 100,000 visitors per year. The town of Waikawa has an information center for tourists. Petrified log at Curio Bay

The now petrified logs, from ancient

conifer Conifers are a group of conifer cone, cone-bearing Spermatophyte, seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the phylum, division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single ...

s closely related to modern

kauri ''Agathis'', commonly known as kauri or dammara, is a genus of 22 species of evergreen tree. The genus is part of the ancient conifer family Araucariaceae, a group once widespread during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, but now largely res ...

and Norfolk pine, were buried by ancient

volcanic A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates a ...

mud flows and gradually replaced by

silica Silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula , most commonly found in nature as quartz and in various living organisms. In many parts of the world, silica is the major constituent of sand. Silica is ...

to produce the

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

s now exposed by the sea. The fossilised forest grew at a time of semi-tropical climate and before grasses and flowering plants had come into existence. The original forest of

cycad Cycads are seed plants that typically have a stout and woody (ligneous) trunk (botany), trunk with a crown (botany), crown of large, hard, stiff, evergreen and (usually) pinnate leaves. The species are dioecious, that is, individual plants o ...

s, conifers and ferns was buried by massive floods of ash and volcanic debris either directly from a volcanic eruption or from later heavy rain on a barren volcanic mountain. Distinct bands of fossilised vegetation exposed in the cliff face indicate that in between such floods, the forest grew back at least four times over a period of some 20,000 years. Following this, the area remained buried over millions of years. Silica started to impregnate the wood and eventually turned it into stone, preserving not just tree stumps and wood, but in some places also fern fronds and leaves. Known fossil forests of this age are very few throughout the world, and this is one of the most extensive and least disturbed of them. The overall area stretches for from Curio Bay to

Slope Point Slope Point is the southernmost point of the South Island of New Zealand. Slope Point lies just south of the small settlements of Waikawa and Haldane, near the southwestern edge of the Catlins and Toetoes Bay and 71 km (40 mi) eas ...

. At low tide, the remaining tree stumps and logs are exposed and clearly visible. A short walkway leads from the car park at the end of the sealed road to a viewing platform over this internationally important area. It is strictly prohibited to damage or remove anything from the area.

References

Bibliography

*R. Buckingham and J. Hall-Jones. 1985. ''The Catlins''. Invercargill: Department of Conservation. . * N. Peat. 1998. ''The Catlins and the Southern Scenic Route''. Dunedin: University of Otago Press. . *Pole, M. 1999
Structure of a near-polar latitude forest from the New Zealand Jurassic
Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol. 147:121–139. {{Petrified forests Mesozoic paleontological sites of Oceania Bays of Southland, New Zealand Southern Scenic Route Rock formations of New Zealand The Catlins Petrified forests Tourist attractions in Southland, New Zealand Jurassic paleontological sites Paleontological sites of New Zealand Southland District