Kiritehere Beach - Fossil City

Of course there is no city here, and very few people, Kiretehere Beach is about as far flung and wild west as you can get in the North Island. It is fossils of the geological kind that populate and dominate the beach, and sunsets of the west coast kind that inspire photographers.

While other parts of both islands have been altered again and again by volcanoes and other tectonic activity in the recent millions of years, the seabed fossils on this beach are utterly original. Those found here have been dated back 200 million years, long before the dinosaurs, to days when the earth was a very different place.

Layered in rock, or loose on the beach are a plethora of fossilised imprints of shellfish which have not existed in a live state for all those millions of years, amongst other, rarer finds.

This brilliant introduction to fossil collection by GNS is filmed here at Kiretehere.

Surfing is another pastime here, the left hand break is off the rocky point and can fire up some quality waves at times.

Sad but probably true is that the beach is also said to be home to a volume of trash from our own century, by way of washed up plastic.

NZPlaces clearly needs an image of this scenic spot, please feel free to send yours in.