This article (see below) features two rockhounds surnamed Taylor who I have met up with from time to time. They are not related. First, some background about the two Taylors.
Bruce Taylor owns and operates the Kai Iwi Beach Holiday Park with his wife Diane. They are just down the road from me. Bruce has been active in a revitalised Whanganui Rock and Mineral Club, and is an avid fossil hunter. In fact, there is quite a community of fossil hunters in this area. An article in the Whanganui Chronicle in February 2024 on local fossil hunter Zane Hair notes that Bruce once found a fossilised seal skull on Kai Iwi Beach that is now housed in Te Papa. My wife Petra often takes our dog Jasper for walks on Kai Iwi Beach and she occasionally finds fossil bones – Bruce has helped her with their identification. Bruce has shown me a couple of trace fossil stones he has found locally – they look exactly the same as the ones I have found along the south coast of the South Island between Riverton and Gemstone Beach. At the start of this year, I gave Bruce some tumble-polished Southland trace fossil stones to give away or sell for the Club at the Holiday Park. I was a member of the Whanganui Club before the Covid lockdown, but more recently have joined the Southland Club because I often visit there and know Southland stones the best.
Trace fossil stone, Gemstone Beach.
Trace fossil stone, Gemstone Beach.
Trace fossil stone, Gemstone Beach.
Trace fossil stone, Gemstone Beach.
Bryozoan fossil stone, Kakanui, North Otago.
Bryozoan fossil slice, Baltic Sea coast, northern Germany, from John Taylor.
The other Taylor is John who comes from faraway – he is an Englishman who lives in Scotland and who travels widely looking for stones and fossils. He has been a regular visitor to New Zealand but I first met him online, on the Facebook Group “New Zealand Lapidary, Rocks, Minerals, Fossils”. Initially, John remarked on the similarity between my Gemstone Beach finds and stones he knew of in Scotland. He later helped me to identify the bryozoan fossil stones I find at Kakanui, giving me a slice of practically identical rock from Germany (see photos above)- I tell this story in my March 2024 Post “Bryozoan Fossils in Chalcedony, Kakanui’s Seadown Beach”. The last time I saw him in November 2024, John helped me identify a Ward Beach stone as a fossil oyster shell. When he visits, John often gives me stones or rock slices.
The article featuring the two Taylors appeared in the 21 November 2024 edition of Whanganui’s River City Press. However, initially I could not find it in the Archives page of the website – a limited number of issues are provided there. So I have worked with the version of the article that was posted on the newspaper’s Facebook Page on 27 November 2024. A couple of days after publishing this Post, I managed to find the original article – see page 2 here. Both versions contain minor errors. Names have been mixed up, an “Ian” appeared out of nowhere, and there are also a couple of minor “era errors” (errors with geological era dates). I have corrected these in the Facebook version below by inserting the odd word (using the text function of the Paint app).
