Heritage Talk - Mountains, Volcanoes Coasts and Caves
Origins of Aotearoa New Zealand's natural wonders
Talk date: 25 October 2023.
From Whangaroa Harbour and the Huka Falls to the Moeraki Boulders and Milford Sound, Aotearoa overflows with extraordinary landforms. This is not a random quirk of nature but a result of the unique and complex geological history of this part of planet Earth.
Geologist Bruce Hayward based this talk on his latest book, Mountains, Volcanoes, Coasts and Caves: Origins of Aotearoa New Zealand's Natural Wonders, which guides readers through 100 natural wonders of Aotearoa – introducing the geology and the 500 million year history of the formation of our small, mostly submerged, part of the world's smallest continent, Zealandia.
Picture shows the peak of Bream Head, the eroded remnant of a volcanic cone.
The book
Mountains, Volcanoes, Coasts and Caves: Origins of Aotearoa New Zealand's Natural Wonders
by Bruce W Hayward with aerial photography by Alastair Jamieson and Lloyd Homer.
Published by Auckland University Press
The book is in the library catalogue
About Bruce Hayward
Bruce Hayward is a semi-retired Auckland geologist and marine ecologist. He has authored/co-authored 300 scientific papers and 25 books on aspects of New Zealand’s fossils, geology, marine ecology, conservation, archaeology and history. Among his popular publications are:
A Field Guide to Auckland (1998, with Ewen Cameron and Graeme Murdoch);
Out of the Ocean into the Fire: History in the rocks, fossils and landforms of Northland, Auckland and Coromandel Peninsula (2017),
Volcanoes of Auckland: A field guide (2019)
Trilobites, Dinosaurs and Moa Bones: the story of New Zealand fossils (1990).
Bruce is a past President of the Geological Society of New Zealand and a former member of the New Zealand Conservation Authority. His studies have been recognised as a James Cook Research Fellow, Fellowship and Hutton Medal of the Royal Society of NZ and Member of the NZ Order of Merit for services to Earth Science Conservation.