Sasha Says - Shag point Plesiosaur and Coal mining

<p>Today we're gonna be talking about an area down the coast of Otago. It's a place called Shag Point that's not far from Palmerston. So there's a few different things to see down there. So I'd just like to touch on that. First of all I know lots of our listeners out there are really interested in fossils. And down at Shag Point, a number of years ago, there was a plesiosaur fossil pretty much intact that was found in the silt/mudstone down there and it is now on display at the Otago Museum. People can go there and have a look at it. And the reason it's significant is because it was the first mainly intact plesiosaur to be found in New Zealand. So it was an amazing discovery - round about seven meters long and it was discovered and removed by the University of Otago - the Geology Department there. So first of all, there's this Plesiosaur fossil - go and check it out at the Otago Museum. Now, the next thing that's really amazing at this Point, when you are there you can see seals and other wildlife there, which are, you know, incredible all along the coast there. There's incredible wildlife. But we've got a really interesting social story that's attached to Shag Point. And that's when you're walking from the car park, there's little bits of rounded quartz under your feet that kind of roll around. It's not the gravel that was brought in for the road. And when I went there I said to Lisa, "Oh this looks abit like the Taratu Formation" which is a formation that sits on top of the schist basement rock in Otago. And we went round the corner abit and lo and behold, we discover that apparently this area used to be commercially mined for coal. Now there is an old little coal mining wagon there that you can look at in the car park. Now, the Taratu Formation was the first sediment that was deposited on the basement rock. And it's hugely variable in its composition, but it's basically quartz that's been reworked out of the schist and in places you get coal. So the coal tells us that it was terrestrial deposition - that means