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Bruce Hayward / Supplied
The find of an 8 cm tall flax snail fossil leads scientists to believe that the species has been in New Zealand for about 3 million years.
The discovery of two flax snail fossils in Auckland shows that the species has been in New Zealand 30 times longer than previously thought.
An Auckland scientist studying fossils said that before the two fossils were found in shell sand mined from the Watercare wastewater treatment plant in Māngere, the oldest known flax snail fossil was found in dunes near Cape Reinga, was about 100,000 years old.
Paleontologist Dr. Bruce Hayward said the new find indicates that the flax / pupuharakeke snail had been in New Zealand for about 3-3.5 million years.
“These are by far the oldest known fossils of this group of snails anywhere in the world,” Hayward said in a press release.
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“They confirm that these large snails have been in New Zealand for a long time. Before the arrival of humans, flax snails were much more widespread than they are today. “
The flax snail, or Placostylus, It is one of the two largest land snails in the country and can be up to 4 inches long, Hayward said.
They are a threatened species and are only found on the Tres Reyes Islands, North Cape, and in a few areas along the east coast of Northland.
They can also be found in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, and Lord Howe, which is located between Australia and New Zealand.
Hayward said paleontologists believed that flax snails arrived in New Zealand millions of years ago from Melanesia, near Papua New Guinea.
Finding fossils of two flax snails in shell sand was a “big surprise,” Hayward said.
“They possibly died on land and were washed away by a stream into the sea.
“The decomposing animals produce gas that may have filled their shells and helped them float out to sea toward ancient Manukau Bay, where they sank to the seabed and were quickly buried in sediment.”
The fossils were found by Stefano Vittor and Julianne McCoun.
