Fossils at Poverty Point Beach

If we drive around through Huonville to the other side of the Huon River, we are the a peninsula of land  (between the Huon and the entrance to the Derwent) where the village of Cygnet is located. South of there about 10 minutes is the southern tip of this peninsula and a small rocky beach. While the rain shower was coming our way from the west, we were walking the beach in search of fossils. Boy, did we find them.



Near the tip of the point we find ourselves in the sort of rock that preserves the impressions of shells and fish (and maybe reptiles?). This rock seems to have been mud at one time and there are oodles of shell, fin, and skin impressions in the rock.

Again, I don't really know the details of what I'm looking at, but the colors and shapes are quite beautiful.

There are also the current residents of the beach, some sort of snail or mollusk. I'm sure I have friends at the university who could tell me all about such things, but they are not here now.

This section of stone has lots of shell impressions along with what seems to be fish tails for fins.

The composition and layering of this portion is really interesting.

More bright colors and strong impressions make up this jigsaw puzzle.

A small piece that E found in her hand give a sense of scale for the kinds of things we are seeing. While some of the earlier bits above were larger than the piece in her hand, the individual impressions are all about the same size.

Here's an example of a larger section filled with these fossil impressions.

I don't know enough about such things to say if these were created by fish tails or by lizard skin or something else altogether.

Here are clearly some mollusk shells.

Away from the point, we find smoother stones and fewer fossils. The fossils we do see are strongly eroded. Mixed in with these stones are the shells of recently alive animals.

An exciting morning of a walk on the beach, exploring really cool fossils, and dodging the rain.

However, no outing in Tasmania would be complete without a rainbow, so here it is. On the left is the point of land where we found all the fossils.