Kiwi hunts for fossils finds some, and has a neat "NZ playing card fossil deck"

This is a great channel to follow.

@futurebird it took quite a while before people believed there were fossils in NZ!

@va2lam

Wat.

@futurebird I meant dinosaur fossils specifically. Of course there are other fossils and I don't think that should have been controversial. https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/discover-collections/read-watch-play/fossils-and-dinosaurs

@va2lam

Ah. Well even that is a bit odd, though I can see how all of that soil might be discouraging. It's really interesting how everything he finds is in concretions. Crabs, whales, dinosaurs...

I wonder if there is any amber. For ant reasons that is the kind of fossil I tend to care about most.

@futurebird "For a long time, the perceived wisdom was that New Zealand had no fossil-bearing amber; it was known that ancient kauri gum was found throughout the country (as kauri had grown as far south as Southland during warmer periods) but no one thought of it as amber." (https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ourchangingworld/audio/201847341/insects-remarkably-preserved-in-new-zealand-amber)

"To put that in perspective, before the pair began their research in 2006, there were only six records of fossil invertebrates from New Zealand."

I guess it goes with the coal.

Interesting amber fact: they sell amber jewelry in Estonia even though it's not particularly local; the tourists like it?

@va2lam @futurebird
The Baltic sea has a lot (relatively speaking) of amber washing up on the shores. There's a tradition of picking amber and creating amber jewellery in societies around the sea.

But for inexpensive tourist merchandise it's probably cheaper to import.