
One of New Zealand’s most exceptional fossil sites may soon be open to scientists again following a land purchase that saved it from commercial mining.
Foulden Maar is a small, deep lake that formed 23 million years ago in Otago, at the start of the Miocene epoch when New Zealand’s climate was much warmer and wetter. A rainforest thrived around the lake’s fringes, and algae known as diatoms bloomed each summer.