Lost World of Rēkohu

Book excerpt: Lost World of Rēkohu explores the extraordinary fossil record of one of the most remote regions of the planet--the Chatham Islands. Once the home of the mysterious Moriori people, this archipelago approximately 850km east of mainland New Zealand preserves a rock archive from a dynamic time in Earth's history when the southern continents were land-locked together near the South Pole 100 million years ago. Isolated for 83 million years, we now know since the dawn of the new millennium that this ancient region was heavily forested with both avian and non-avian dinosaurs, and the warm waters hosted the largest sea monsters--marine reptiles--that ever lived. This diversity of life on land and in the sea tells a tale never told before in Zealandia, the Moriori's magical land of the 'Misty Skies'.