X marks the spot for eager youngsters in our treasure trove of fossil shellfish and dinosaur bones, writes Alex Tully.
The sand was as black as night beneath our feet and the wind-whipped waves roared like a taniwha as we made our way down the beach to the cliffs of hidden treasure. Our quest was for no ordinary riches. We were looking for something that no other human being had set eyes upon.
We had come to this lonely spot, on Kiritehere Beach on the wild west coast of north Taranaki, following the clues in a map sold to us by an ancient bearded man with black teeth, a wooden leg and a patch over one eye ... though I think he photocopied it from a brilliant little book called The Kiwi fossil hunters handbook.
As we approached the cliffs at the far end of the beach, we could see indications that other treasure hunters had been there before. Had they found all the loot already? Led by our two sons, aged 5 and 6 and both crazy about anything to do with dinosaurs, we searched feverishly, hoping against hope to find what we were looking for. And then, there it was.
From the outside it looked just like an ordinary rock shaped like a dinosaur egg. Armed with a special hammer, safety goggles and lots of excitement, the boys carefully chiselled away at the rock until, with a crack, it parted to reveal a collection of 200-million-year-old scallop-like shellfish called monotis. Anything edible was long gone. What remained was the shape of the animal's shell that had been turned into rock over many years. We had found our first fossil.
