MikePole

December 27, 2019

/
comments 3

New Zealand’s Doggerland

Do we have a submerged ‘Doggerland‘ in New Zealand?

In 1950 a boat, the HMNZS ‘Lachlan’ dredged a sample of “lignite” from the bottom of Toitoi (or Toetoe) Bay, at the far south end of New
Zealand’s South Island, from a depth of nine fathoms (the general view shown in the featured image. See below for more details). The sam-
ple was forwarded to R.A. Couper, a New Zealand specialist in fossil pollen.

To concentrate the pollen (by eliminating as much as possible of everything else) Couper boiled up a little bit of the lignite in potassium hy-
droxide, stained it, and put it under a microscope. He found it was dominated by beech pollen (Couper, 1951), but also a lot of other plants
that you would expect in a peat swamp (like Sphagnum moss, sedges and the tangle-fern) and the surrounding swamp forest (like kahikatea
and rimu).

There were two surprises here. One was that in among all the usual suspects, Couper spotted three types of spore that were both un-
known in New Zealand’s current flora and still undescribed as fossils. In other words, they were extinct and new to science, although one
was not new to him – he recognised he had also seen it in a lignite near Wanganui. He later (Couper, 1953) named this Peromonolites prob-
lematicus. The other surprise was that it was dominated by pollen of the southern beech (Nothofagus), whereas the regional pollen today
would be mainly conifers (like rimu). Both of these points suggested a reasonable age for the lignite, and Couper argued that it was
Pliocene (currently regarded as about 5.3 Ma to 2.6 million years ago).

A few decades down the track, Couper’s extinct species was renamed as Bryosporis problematicus (Bussell and Mildenhall, 1990), with the
authors concluding that its age range was Pliocene – mid Pleistocene (so possibly extending to a few hundred thousand years ago), al-
though they hedged, adding that it “may be an extant spore type”. Despite this uncertainty, the known age range supports Couper’s initial
broad conclusion for the age of the Toetoe Bay lignite.

That chunk of lignite is the compressed remains of what would have been a peat swamp, or swampy forest, which grew under what is now
Foveaux Strait. It is in some ways, New Zealand’s example of the now famous ‘Doggerland’ which has been discovered below the North
Sea.
The relatively shallow Foveaux Strait would have been fully exposed at the peak of each ice age (when global sea levels fall), and only to-
tally submerged at peak interglacials. However, at peak emergence, conditions were probably too severe for forest. To give an idea of
what our Doggerland may have looked like at one point in time, I’ve mapped the 50 m depth mark for the area. At the height of glacial
maximum, it would have been even more extensive. In reality, the exact shorelines at any point in time are harder to determine – New
Zealand lies on a geological plate boundary, causing our west coast to rise, while the east subsides.

The green area shows the approximate extent of New Zealand’s ‘Doggerland’ at one point of time (what would emerge with a 50 m drop in sea level). The brown areas are
present-day land.

Relicts of our Doggerland are found on land, here and there, on the coasts surrounding Foveaux Strait. They are beds of peat/lignite ex-
posed in the cliffs, which are being eroded by the waves, but would have once extended out into the sea. I’ve looked at various samples of
this material for fossil leaf remains. What I’ve seen has a lot of kahikatea (Dacrycarpus), as well as swamp broom (Carmichaelia), flax
(Phormium), and other species, although no extinct ones. They indicate that a similar mosaic of peat swamps and swampy forest which
once grew all over Southland, once extended out over what is now sea floor. However, when I’ve looked for fossil pollen, I’ve seen no
Nothofagus beech at all (but lots of ferns and kahikatea). This suggests that my samples and Couper’s represent different times of our
Doggerland’s history.
 A microscopic view of stomata (leaf pores) from kahikatea (Dacrycarpus) from peat/lignite on the coast near Fortrose. Each stomata is a fraction of a millimeter across.

Last year, in the company of Christine, whose family owns one of the farms nearby – one of the southernmost farms in New Zealand, we
drove to the mouth of the Mataura River. On the cliffs below us were some of those pockets of peat/lignite. From our vantage point on the
hill, we could see more or less where Couper’s sample had been dredged from (somewhere along a line of sight between Bluff Hill and
Ruapuke Island).

The approximate location of Couper’s lignite sample, as seen from the mouth of the Mataura River. At various times over the past million or two years, all of this sea was
New Zealand’s Doggerland, and would have been covered in peat swamp and swamp forest.

So was this really our ‘Doggerland’? There is an important difference – the ‘original’ Doggerland had people living on it. It has become fa-
mous because of the recognition that just below the waves, an entire Mesolithic landscape, is, or at least was, nearly perfectly preserved.
Over the last century or so, trawling by fishing boast has uncovered a wealth of bones, stone tools, and even woodwork dating back to
around 6500–6200 BC. Unfortunately, the very activity which made the discovery, has probably destroyed most of it. Even as far back as
1913, Clement Reid in his book ‘Submerged Forests‘ (you can download his book for free here), wrote that when “trawlers first visited the
Dogger Bank its surface seems to have been strewn with large bones of land animals” but “now the whole surface of the Dogger Bank has
been gone over again and again by the trawlers, and very few of the fossil bones are found”. It’s rather sad, but poignant and also topical
(given current sea level rise) to consider that Doggerland was a home to people who would have been aware that it was vanishing. How
they may have felt about this was explored in Jim Leary’s book ‘The Remembered Land: Surviving Sea-level Rise after the Last Ice Age‘.

A tree fern, tens or hundreds of thousands of years old, emerges from peat/lignite on the coast near Fortrose.

But ‘our’ New Zealand Doggerland, is much older. To put its age in perspective, it is far younger than the Jurassic fossil forest horizons
which are found along the same coast, and further afield at Curio Bay. They are also younger than the woody lignites which are scattered
across Southland and are around 20 million years old. Our Doggerland lignites are likely to be between a few tens of thousands and maybe
a couple of million years old. Therefore, New Zealand’s example never had humans living in it, as New Zealand was only discovered about
700 years ago (but note that one of its topographic highs, Ruapuke Island, would become the stronghold of the Southern Maori).

Pieces of wood poke out from peat/lignite on the coast near Fortrose.
While ‘Doggerland’ seems to have become the most common name for the flooded North Sea landscape, Leary (2011, 2015) has been
pointed out that by priority, its name should be ‘Northsealand’ (we have no idea what the original inhabitants called their home) as this is
the term coined by Child in 1958. Furthermore, the ‘Dogger Banks’ are actually rather recent sedimentary features which have accumu-
lated since the flooding of Doggerland/Northsealand landscape.

A microscopic view of stomata (leaf pores) from flax (Phormium) from peat/lignite on the coast near Fortrose. Each stomata is a fraction of a millimeter across.

What should we call New Zealand’s Doggerland? You might think that as it is now under the waters of Foveaux Strait, it could be called
‘Foveauxland’. However, just as ‘Northsealand’ has priority over ‘Doggerland’, the Maori name, Te Ara a Kiwa (‘the path of Kiwa’) or Te Ara
a Kewa (‘the path of the whale’), takes priority over the European Foveaux Strait.

I’ll leave it to someone else to work out

an appropriate name….

***

Just a final comment. Back in 2000 Tony Roberts and I were on a 10 day walk around Stewart Island. We’d diverted down to Port Pegasus
for four days, then crossed over to the west coast. By the time we reached the deserted Masons Beach, we hadn’t seen anyone for days
(not counting hearing a raucous party on a fishing boat moored offshore Pegasus). The next morning we went off exploring the area be-
hind our camp. Out of some high sand dunes we saw some long thin bones protruding. I wasn’t sure what they were, but a little voice in my
head told me not to pull them out for a closer look. Instead, we went down to the beach – and found something else of more relevant in-
terest. The low-tide had exposed a bed of ‘lignite’ offshore. I sampled a piece and much latter found it to be full of rata leaves – it was an-
other fragment of New Zealand’s Doggerland. But just after I grabbed that lump of lignite, a helicopter landed – and a small group
emerged to announce that they were archaeologists coming to investigate the human skeleton which was eroding out of the sand hills in
the distance.

I still have nightmares at the thought of standing in the dunes, clutching a human bone, just as those archaeologists arrived to carefully ex-
cavate them….

References
Childe, V.G. 1958 [2009]. The Prehistory of European Society. Nottingham, Spokesman Books (reprint edition)

Couper, R.A. 1951. Microflora of a submarine lignite from Toetoes Bay, near Bluff, New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Science and
Technology, B33:179-186.

Couper, R.A. 1953. Upper Mesozoic and Cainozoic spores and pollen grains from New Zealand. New Zealand Geological Survey
Palaeontological Bulletin n.s., 22:1-77.

Leary, J. 2011. Experiencing change on the prehistoric shores of North Sea land: an anthropological perspective on Early Holocene sea-
level rise. In: Benjamin, J., Bonsall, C., Pickard, C. & Fischer, A. (eds) Submerged Prehistory. Oxbow Books, Oxford.

Leary, J. 2015. The Remembered Land: Surviving Sea-level Rise after the Last Ice Age. Bloomsbury Academic.

Reid, C. 1913. Submerged Forests. Cambridge University Press.

Royd Bussell, M. & Mildenhall, D.C. (1990) Extinct palynomorphs from middleand late Pleistocene terrestrial sediments, South Wanganui
Basin, New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics, 33:3, 439-447, DOI: 10.1080/00288306.1990.10425699

Share this:

 Twitter  Reddit  Facebook

Like this:

Loading...

Related

Miocene Swamp Forests of St Bathans, New New Zealand's Hawks Crag Breccia - prelude to The Kai Point Coal Mine - Late Cretaceous vege-
Zealand the drift from Gondwana tation treasure-trove
October 17, 2016 March 26, 2017 September 27, 2014
In "New Zealand plant fossils" In "New Zealand Geology" In "New Zealand plant fossils"

Tweet

Like 29
 
Save

Filed under: Forests, Geology, History/Archaeology, New Zealand plant fossils, Uncategorized

Tagged: Doggerland, Kahikatea, New Zealand plant fossils

About the Author

Posted by mikepole.com

From New Zealand. Traveling the weyward path trying to figure out how the world works. I study fossil plants, past climates, travel, walk,
hike, read, take photos, struggle with computer graphics and plant trees.

« PREVIOUS POST NEXT POST »

3 Comments

Liz from NZ

Really love the photo of the mouth of the Mataura River. We enjoy an occasional visit to the cafe at Fortrose but we haven’t been out
above that view. Is there access to that spot via the golf course?

December 27, 2019

/ Reply

Graeme

Fascinating as usual, yet another reminder that I need to visit the forgotten corner (Catlins) with time to explore. But ‘tree fern’? Given
the scale provided I would have thought Blechnum discolor would be the best candidate in extant flora. Oddly though, Southland is the
only place where I have encountered crown fern approaching tree fern size, with the tallest around 7ft.

December 27, 2019

/ Reply

mikepole

Thanks Graeme, yes, time for you to visit. I always regarded the Catlins as the ‘forgotten corner’, but it’s been very much discovered in
the past few years – with major road reconstruction!

I will definitely take your Blechnum discolor suggestion on board. The ‘fossils’ are certainly small, and I’m using ‘tree fern’ loosely, in that
they are trunks. The fossil spores are dominated by Cyathea.

December 27, 2019

/ Reply