Cold but rewarding trip down at Beaumaris

[Dan 1000]

G'day all,

 

Today I decided to go down for a hunt at Beaumaris with my dad and make good use of the low tide. For those who don't know, the fossils from Beaumaris come from the Beaumaris Sandstone Formation, aged 6.5-4.5 million years ago (late Miocene to early Pliocene) and around 30 minutes from Melbourne. To find the fossils we searched through the shingle on the beach that had been washed up from a phosphatic nodule bed which can only be partially accessed at low tide and is where most of the vertebrate material derives from. Fossils from this site include: Shark and ray teeth, fish jaws and teeth, ceteacen bones and teeth, bird bones, seal bones, terrestrial mammal bones, rare turtle shell, corals, bivalves, gastropods, nautiloids, crustaceans, brachiopods and echinoids. Despite the water being very cold (And falling into the water on my way out of the site) We found many good fossils today, many of them firsts.

 

 

The Site

 

Tusk Shells (Laevidentalium)

 

Sea Urchins (Lovenia Woodsi)

 

Port Jackson Shark teeth (Heterodontus cainozoicus)

 

Toadfish crushing tooth plates (Diodon)

 

Shark tooth (Shortfin Mako?)

 

Assorted bone fragments (Most likely Cetacean) 

[Monica]

Great finds, Daniel - I especially love the echinoids and scaphopods (although I know that you're more of a fan of vertebrate material, so I'm glad you found some of that, too )

[Dan 1000]

@Monica

Thank you  

[Fossildude19]

Nice report, Dan.  

Looks like a great place to hunt. 

Thanks for posting.

[caldigger]

Seriously, how cold is the water?

[Dan 1000]

@caldigger Today the temperature was around 14 degrees Celsius. Not sure how the cold the water gets overseas in winter but for an Aussie who is used to the heat it was pretty cold 

[sixgill pete]

50 minutes ago, DanKurek said:

@caldigger Today the temperature was around 14 degrees Celsius. Not sure how the cold the water gets overseas in winter but for an Aussie who is used to the heat it was pretty cold 

57 degrees Fahrenheit is pretty cold water. I would not want to be sloshing around in it. Great finds Dan. The Lovenia are really nice and I personally really like the Port Jackson Shark tooth. 

[ynot]

Nice place to find some neat fossils.

Thanks for sharing the adventure.

[Innocentx]

Beautiful cliff and great finds!

[Oxytropidoceras]

Great fossils. Thanks for posting.

 

Below are some pertinent papers that people can look at:

 

Fitzgerald, E. and Schmidt, R., 2014. Fossils of Beaumaris. Museum Victoria.

http://z4.ifrm.com/30233/130/0/p1172506/Fossils_of_Beaumaris_Feb_2015.pdf

 

The Beaumaris Bay Fossil Site including the cliffs, the adjacent wave

cut platform and the immediate sub-tidal zone. Appendix F to the 2016 

application for Beaumaris Bay to be listed as a Natural Heritage Site.

http://www.iubs.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Other-Publications/XXVIII._Appendix_F_Fossil_report_for_Heritage_Listing_Jan_2016.pdf

 

Ter, P 2016, Ichnology and palaeoecology of the Neogene Beaumaris 

Sandstone: a reconstruction of palaeoenvironments using trace fossils 

as interpretive tools., Masters by Research, Science, RMIT University.

http://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/view/rmit:161804

http://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/eserv/rmit:161804/Ter.pdf

 

VandenBerg, A.H., 2016. Depositional facies and extent of the late 

Neogene Sandringham Sandstone in southern Victoria, Australia. 

Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, 128(2), pp. 7-24.

http://www.publish.csiro.au/rs/RS16009

http://www.publish.csiro.au/rs/pdf/RS16009

 

Yours,

 

Paul H.

[Connah]

@caldigger @DanKurekthe water temp is currently hovering around 10°. I dived Beaumaris last Wednesday & it was numbingly cold even when wearing a 7mm suit & being as active as possible without missing too many fossils. Bring on the Summer months.

 

  Nice finds by the way @DanKurek you are definitely in the right spot to find some goodies.

[Wrangellian]

So that's what winter is like down under. It's nice and toasty up here, 30+ Celsius though I'm not going in the water so I couldn't tell you how it is. (Never like it is in Oz during southern summer, in any case.)

 

Good report - always nice to see more about a site I keep hearing about.

[Tidgy's Dad]

Thanks for posting, Dan. 

Love the echinoids, but the Laevidentalium are awesome! 

[Miocene_Mason]

Nice teeth

Cool to see the Miocene cliffs in other places in the world!

Hunting in the cold isn’t as fun, but it’s good crowd repellent. Here is me hunting in the ‘merican winter, I don’t know exactly the water temp, but it’s below 0 degrees C, this is brackish water.