Dannevirke man’s fossil find earns Geoscience prize

Derek Batchelor with an image of the fossil he found years ago and that has now earned him recognition with a prize from the Geoscience Society of New Zealand. Photo / Leanne Warr

It might have taken a few years, but a rare fossil find has earned a Dannevirke man recognition from the Geoscience Society of New Zealand.

Derek Batchelor was out at Pongaroa after the flooding in 2004, when he came across the fossilised spiral valve.

“It’s a soft-tissue fossil,” he says, adding that it’s about 145 million years old.

The valve, identified by R. Ewan Fordyce, who was considered the top palaeontologist in New Zealand, is part of the digestive system of an extinct species of shark.

Derek was awarded the Harold Wellman Prize at the Geoscience Society of New Zealand conference this month.

Harold Wellman was considered unrivalled in his contribution to New Zealand earth science and provided funds for the prize for an important fossil find.

The fossil is now in the Massey University teaching collection, although Derek says Ewan wanted it to go to Te Papa.

He says he felt the find would be photographed, catalogued and then put in a drawer where no one would ever see it again because no one would know there was anything that rare.

Derek has had a lifelong interest in geology.

For his 7th birthday, his parents gave him a geological hammer.

After he left school, he got his first job with the New Zealand Geological Survey in Lower Hutt.

“Because of the people I met there, I was invited to go to Toronto University in Canada.”

That led him to going “all over the place”, such as the Arctic Circle, Hudson Bay, and a little tiny village known as Churchill (Canada), which is now overrun with polar bears, he says.

Over the years, he has amassed quite a collection, including marine fossils, whale bones and dolphin bones, some of which are now part of the collection at Massey University.