After an exciting end to my time in Christchurch I thought Dunedin might be the destination for a more relaxing few days. However the excitement began on the drive down to Dunedin! I was given a lift by Dr. Alan Tennyson, Curator of Vertebrates at Te Papa Museum in Wellington. On the way south from Christchurch we decided to take slight detour and head to Haugh’s quarry in the Hakataramea Valley to have a brief look around to see if we could spot any fossils. We spent about 90 minutes looking around and were about to get back in the truck to continue on to Dunedin when Alan said “let’s have a quick look around the top of the quarry”. We searched around there for a few minutes until Alan found a bit of bone exposed. We brushed a bit of sediment away, the bone kept going. We brushed more sediment away, the bone still kept going! After a few minutes more it became apparent that this was a seriously large animal, we had bone spread out along at least a two metre long strip and there was no sign of the end of it! It was a fossil whale of some description, though what exactly remains to be seen. We realised that we were not going to be able to excavate this fossil ourselves and we were already going to be late for the beginning of the conference, so we decided to take some photos of what we had uncovered and head on to Dunedin.
The next day we showed the images to Professor Ewan Fordyce, head of the Geology department at University of Otago and world-renowned authority on fossil whales. He was intrigued enough to want to go and excavate the fossil on Wednesday but then he received a phone call that two whales (Arnoux’s beaked whale or Berardius arnuxii) had stranded near Bluff, at the southern end of the island. He then invited me to come along on Wednesday and help dissect one of them! So I spent Wednesday covered in blood, guts and (when I helped to move the head) brains! Great fun!
When I wasn’t helping discover fossil whales or dissect dead extant ones, I also attended a few of the talks at the conference. Unfortunately there wasn’t as many palaeontology related talks as I had hoped, but it was more than made up for by the amount of research and field trips I got to go on. I managed to get lots of photos of the collections at University of Otago and Otago Museum. I also met a lot of new colleagues and (I hope) friends, one of whom, Bobby Boessenecker, has one of the best palaeontology blogs going.
Dunedin is a beautiful little city and is definitely worth a visit if the opportunity presents itself.
A big thank you goes to Ewan Fordyce for allowing access to his collections, taking time out of his busy schedule to talk with me and of course for letting me join in on the whale dissection.
Another big thank you goes to Alan Tennyson for driving me around everywhere as well as several interesting discussions.
And a massive thank you goes to Felix and Ikerne for letting me stay with them for the week, I look forward to returning the favour one day in Melbourne!
A great trip and I look froward to returning to New Zealand as soon as possible.
Travis Park 
One thought on “Research/Conference trip to New Zealand: Dunedin”