Earthquakes
Aratini Fossil Place being a bit of a disappointment, fossil whale-wise, it's just as well that there's another fossil baleen whale at Earthquakes not too far away.
It's the lower jaw of a baleen whale, still embedded in a block of limestone that fell from the cliff overhead. I don't know if it's named, but New Zealand has so many fossil cetaceans that researchers are spoiled for choice. In the 1870s Alexander McKay recovered an almost complete 7m fossil near here. Tragically, it was damaged beyond repair on its way to Wellington. John Hore, the farmer that owns the land at Aratini, found a fossil dolphin in the wall at the back of one of his sheds.
The unusual name for the area comes from early English settlers of the area, who thought the geology was the result of large earthquakes. Instead it's a graben, created when a large slab of the hillside went for a stroll down the slope and blocks of limestone fell into the resulting gap.
The area has some rare endangered limestone-loving plants, but alas clambering around looking for them probably would have ended up with me nursing a few broken legs.
