In our previous interview with palaeontologist Professor Ewan Fordyce, we talked about how a childhood fossil collection sparked a passion for discovery that led to a lifelong career at the forefront of cetacean paleontology. Here we pick up the conversation about some of his fossil finds in New Zealand.

He tells us what’s left out there for palaeontologist to discover and shares with us why Australia and New Zealand are the last frontiers for discoveries in palaeontology.

Professor Fordyce with a baleen whale skull. Photo credit: E. Fordyce

Where do you carry out your research today?

My New Zealand based research is within a few hours drive of Dunedin, north into the Waitaki Valley. Looking at the limestone and greensand outcrops, there’s more there than I can possibly hope to deal with. I do range further afield and have done fieldwork in Southland, the West Coast and Dannevirke on the North Island. I’ve also worked in the Nelson region, on the north Canterbury coast. My focus has been fossil whales and dolphins, but also penguins, sharks and bony fish.

It would seem that a great many number of fossils have been already been discovered. How do palaeontologists know if more are out there and where do they begin to look?

With what we know already, we are only skimming the surface. There’s been a really serious concentrated effort on marine invertebrate fossils. As for vertebrates, it’s a different story. Vertebrates are actually really hard work. They’re big, they’re difficult to connect, they take time and cost a lot of money to prepare. My feeling is we are only just skimming the surface with our whales, dolphins and penguins. As we do more work we are going to vastly increase the number of species.

Another way to think of it is like this: imagine we’ve got 20 species of penguin living today. What is the geological history for each of those species? If we were to follow each one of those species through it history, how far back in time would it go before it turned into an ancestral species?

Let’s pretend that each of our 20 species has existed for 2 million years, on average. If we went back 4 million years, we would already have had one species turn over into another. If we went back another 4 million years, we might be dealing with 40 species. If we went back another 2 million years, we might actually have 60 species. The history of penguins is probably 60 million years old. You can think how many species turned over in that time and how many might have lived in total – hundreds.

Carcharodon angustidens extinct shark. Photo credit: E. Fordyce.

Tell us about the discovery of Carcharadon angustidens, a fossil Great White shark.

It was a complete chance find. I was in North Otago extracting a fossil whale. Someone noticed some shark vertebrae sitting on the surface of the outcrop. I went back on another trip with my saw and some assistants and we cut out a block of shark vertebrae. As we lifted the shark vertebrae, we saw a dolphin bone underneath.

I thought, “What a bonus, we’ve got a dolphin here as well!”

We went back and started digging seriously, looking for the dolphin, but actually found more shark – about 160 teeth of a gigantic great white shark.

You can tell that this was a big animal because you can compare the size of the teeth with those of a living great white shark. Knowing what size tooth goes with what size body, we [could estimate that] we had fossil shark that was 9 metres long.

In your view, why is it that the Great White sharks of today are smaller?

The question of why some extinct species were so much bigger than their modern relatives is a really tricky one to deal with. In the end we don’t know.

With sharks, it could be that large sharks in the past were specialized for feeding on bigger prey, possibly bigger whales that have now gone extinct.

Another way to look at it is this: with baleen whales for example, there is some evidence that giant body size evolved several times throughout geologic time. Perhaps some species today are the biggest in their lineage that have ever lived.

Tell us a bit about early penguins. Is it correct that they appeared at a time when flying dinosaurs, such at Pterosaurs, were still roaming the skies?

The earliest of the fossil penguins is a New Zealand penguin that we call “Waimanu” and there are two species. The older of those species was living about 60 to 62 million years ago, just after the age of the dinosaurs. If penguins were already established 60-62 million years ago, maybe their origins actually go back further. Maybe the first penguin was significantly older. Maybe it was as old as 65 million years. If penguin history goes back before 65mya, then we are back into the age of the dinosaurs. So you could argue that yes, the very early penguins were contemporaneous with dinosaurs and pterosaurs – the flying dinosaurs. If we accept that the oldest known penguin lived 62 million years ago, and we understand that other groups of birds like ducks, flamingoes, shorebirds, and parrots, must have evolved earlier, that means that many of the ancestors of today’s modern birds evolved, diversified and lived back in Cretaceous times.

Why study palaeontology in New Zealand?

Some places have had a really long history of palaeontology study, such as Europe.

That’s really where palaeontology started off. There are still things to do in Europe, but they’ve already got a history of 200 years. In a way, many of the opportunities are gone. It’s the same in the USA. They have a shorter history (of palaeontology), but an awful lot of people have been doing it.

I think of New Zealand, and perhaps Australia and bits of South America, as a last frontier. There hasn’t been a long history of work done in New Zealand, and it has been carried out by really keen and committed people working in isolation. People in New Zealand have only been working for about 150 years in serious palaeontology and there have only been fewer than 100 names who have been serious practictioners. We do have many opportunities here. It really is the last frontier.

Coming up soon, Professor Fordyce talks to Science Hub about a strange toothless Antarctic fossil dolphin, his greatest find and what fifteen years of dedicated work at the Smithsonian Institute has produced.

About our contributor:

Andrea Laracy is a former Sydney-sider, now studying at the University of Otago. She is a science writer with a special interest in zoology.

Science Hub Australia is pleased to have her on aboard as our New Zealand correspondent.

When not in the field casting a well-trained eye over fossil beds, he teaches at the University of Otago where he is Head of the Geology Department. His work takes him further afield to Washington DC, where he is a Research Associate at the Department of Vertebrate Zoology in the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution.

In this week’s interview, he talks to Andrea Laracy for Science Hub Australia about the fossils of Australia and New Zealand and how he came to be a palaeontologist. In a world of fascinating fossil history, he chips away the sediment to uncover what lies beneath the work of a palaeontologist.

Professor Fordyce with a baleen whale skull. Photo credit: E. Fordyce.

What drew you to science?
Curiosity as a small kid. I love the natural world. I like looking at living things. That’s what got me started and my parents fostered that when I was little.

Nearly every child at one time harboured a fascination with dinosaurs. What led you to study palaeontology?

The first thing I knew about palaeontology was dinosaurs. Every little kid knows about dinosaurs. They get plastic dinosaurs in their cereal packets. I was fascinated with that, but didn’t understand anything about them. I started looking at fossils, not in any sort of organised way, but I was fascinated by finding any sort of evidence of life in the rock.

What did you study at university?

I was originally set to become a zoologist. I loved working with animals and I was really interested in New Zealand’s native animals in the forest, on the seashore and in the mountains.

I went to university with zoology in mind, but I happened to take first year geology – really as a fill-in course. And I loved it. I was particularly interested in palaeontology. After I finished my first degree I decided to do a doctorate that had a mix of zoology and geology. I chose fossils and it was wonderfully stimulating. I had an interest in fossil whales and dolphins and I could go out in the field and handle them as a geologist and as a zoologist.

How did you become a palaeontologist?

I was well through my doctorate and I didn’t have a clue about what I was going to do afterwards. Then, just out of the blue, a chance appeared. I had a visit from an American marine mammalogist, someone interested in whales and dolphins – and fossils! After he visited I thought I could actually make a career out of palaeontology. Not long afterwards, I got a letter from a scientist in Washington DC at the Smithsonian Institute saying he had heard of my work and asked whether I would consider applying for a post-doctoral fellowship there. I thought, “What a great opportunity.”

I didn’t know what chance I had, but I got it and went from New Zealand to the States. It was a tremendously stimulating experience and that’s what got me launched.

How did you become interested in whales and dolphins?

I had a friend who was the curator of the museum of New Zealand in Wellington. He was a good naturalist and worked on molluscs. He found a dolphin fossil on a field trip and thought he could work it up on his own but then he realised he couldn’t.

“We’ve got these fossil whale and dolphin bones here,” he said.  “Why don’t you do work them up for a doctorate?”

It turned out that New Zealand was a good place to work on these types of fossils – we have fantastic material.

What are the differences between Australian and New Zealand fossils?

It’s interesting to compare rocks of similar age in Melbourne and Victoria versus what is here in New Zealand, north of Dunedin. For some strange reason the fossils are actually pretty rare in Victoria. They are really interesting but there are only a few really good specimens known. Whereas when we look here, the fossils are relatively rich. I don’t quite understand the difference between Australian and New Zealand rock sequences but several of us are very interested in this question and have discussed it endlessly.

Coming up next, Professor Fordyce talks to Science Hub Australia about what remains to be discovered, Great White Sharks, giant fossil penguins and what makes Australia and New Zealand the last frontiers of palaeontology today.

About our contributor:

Andrea Laracy is a former Sydney-sider, now studying at the University of Otago. She is a science writer with a special interest in zoology.

Science Hub Australia is pleased to have her on aboard as our New Zealand correspondent. Welcome Andrea!

“Dinosaurs and fossils are 98% of the time, a child’s introduction to science,” says Dr Erich Fitzgerald, a young palaeontologist trained in Melbourne.

“Most kids between 4 and 8 have a case of what you’d call dinosauritis. They go to a museum and want to see dinosaurs.

While most kids grow out of it, there are those who have terminal cases. And those cases grow up to be palaeontologists.

“There’s an aura of mystery around palaeontology because you have the opportunity, in a true sense, to travel back through time. It’s a vivid, tangible, tactile thing … You can give a five year old kid a Tyrannosaurus rex skull to touch, and in that moment of sheer wonder at the fossil, there are questions and connections with the natural world being made. And in modern times, I think people want to get back to that.

“People say to you, ‘You’ll never get a job, never earn a million dollars, you’ll live on the street. If you do palaeontology, you’ll never get anywhere.’ But I’m convinced that palaeontologists are a bit different. They’re the true believers and they do it because they love it.”

Dr Karen Roberts, another young Australian palaeontologist considers what palaeontology can tell us about the world – past, present and future.

“It gives us great insights into deep time history, and animal trajectories through time. The platypus is a key example.  It used to have teeth, it was larger and had a wider distribution. Now, its distribution has shrunk, it doesn’t have teeth – which is one of the endpoints in evolutionary living – and it’s hyper-specialised. Theoretically, it’s on the way out. But that’s no reason to give up on it and say ‘let’s not worry about the platypus anymore’. If anything, it creates even more of a reason for conservation, because you know it’s reached the end of the line.

“On the other hand, the fossil record shows us that koalas are relatively more common and wide-spread than they used to be. From a conservation perspective, koalas are surviving fine in their current habitats of eucalyptus forest. They’re prolific enough to be considered a pest in some areas.

“From that perspective, palaeontology helps us look at where the fauna of Australia is heading, and to think about the evolution and conservation of our animals.”

Related articles:

• Pavloc’s Epilogue: Bright young things, part 1 – post-docs in the USA
• Pavlov’s Epilogue: Bright young things, part 2 – the value of advice
• Pavlov’s Epilogue: Bright young things, part 3 – life D.C

A previous placoderm fossil found at the same site was found to contain a smaller fish within the fossil itself.  Dr Long, Head of Sciences at Museum Victoria, first thought was seeing the fossil’s stomach and its final meal, but closer examination revealed an umbilical cord connecting the smaller fish to the larger animal.  Dr Long and his team realised they were looking at the first example of young in utero and the oldest mother in the world.

New details from a male specimen of the fish show the anatomical structures required for internal fertilisation, necessary for the gestation of young in utero.  Dr Long’s team thought the male and female pelvis of the fossil fish were identical, but a better example of the male fish, discovered recently, shows important differences between the sexes.

“[The Gogo sites] are unique,” says Dr Long.  “They’re one of the best sites in the world because the fish are perfectly preserved in three-dimensions.  In recent years, we’ve discovered a number of soft tissues in them.

“Very recently, only last year, we found the first embryos with umbilical cords still attached.  We’re looking at the discovery of the reproductive organs and physiology of these fish and we’ve discovered how they reproduce and about the sexual dimorphism and so on.”

The ancient fish of the Gogo plains are so well preserved because they are found wholly encased smooth globules of limestone, called nodules.  The nodules are relatively easy to find on the ground, and can be cracked open with a hammer to see if they contain a fossil.

A nodule with a fossil is glued back together and back in the lab, immersed in a dilute solution of acetic acid, which eats away the limestone.  Bit by bit, the fossil within emerges from the rock.

“It’s a really exciting area of research because these fishes lived 380 million years ago, at a time fishes were the most advanced forms of life on earth,” says Dr Long.  “We’re talking just before the land animals had appeared, the tetrapods.

“These fishes demonstrate changes in the fish anatomy leading towards the evolution of land animals and the very primitive fish, these armoured placoderms, give us windows into how reproductive physiology evolved in the first vertebrates.”

Go Go Station in the Kimberley region of Western Australia was first discovered as a fossil bed in 1940 by German geologist Curt Teichert.  Study of the beautiful fossils found there was only revived in the 1960s by scientists from the London Natural History Museum and Dr Long’s involvement with Gogo reaches back to the mid 1980s.

“It’s so exciting to find something new.  Another piece of the puzzle that tells us something that we didn’t know, and all these bits of the puzzle are fitting into a more complete story about the evolution of the first vertebrates and how they lived.

“Fossils can tell us two things,” says Dr Long.  “Firstly, what ancient creatures looked like, by reconstructing their skeletons and bones, their impressions and so on.

“Secondly, when you get exceptionally preserved fossils like those of Gogo, they can tell us a lot about their biology.  That’s very exciting, but it’s so rare to get information about reproductive biology, about muscles and muscle attachments, how the nerve cells worked and things like that.”

In Dr Long’s research, the best of the old and new worlds combine, allowing his colleagues to use synchrotrons, micro-fine CT scanners and other tools to squeeze every last bit of data from these remarkable fossils.

“These are all the new sorts of things we can discover when we’re combining the oldest, best preserved fossils with state-of-the-art technology.

It’s been a whole watershed in understanding about the evolution of these early vertebrates.”

We’ll hear more from Dr Long in the next issue of Science Hub about museum careers for scientists.

Fresh news!  Dr John Long has been appointed Vice President of Research and Collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, USA.  Congratulations John!

Related articles:

• Skills – Communication: Written in stone: a palaeontologist’s stories
• Careers – Museums: Museum careers for scientists
• Spotlight: Palaeontology – a study of life in the geological past

“Dinosaurs and fossils are 98% of the time, a child’s introduction to science.  Most kids between 4 and 8 have a case of what you’d call dinosauritis.  They go to a museum and want to see dinosaurs.  While most kids grow out of it, there are those who have terminal cases.  And those cases grow up to be palaeontologists.”

Words from a young scientist with a terminal case of dinosauritis, Dr Erich Fitzgerald.  We hear more about his experience as a fossil hunter, and that of Dr Karen Roberts, another young palaeontologist, in coming months at Science Hub.

If you’re wondering whether palaeontology might be your thing, come back soon and read our article in full!

Related articles:

• Pavlov’s Epilogue: Bright Young Things in Washington #1