The Hukanui late Quaternary sites
The series of rich late Quaternary fossil sites on the southern face of Hukanui, inland Hawkes Bay, were investigated first by W. H. (Bill) Hartree Jnr in the late 1950s. Hartree was assisted at various times by Ron J Scarlett of Canterbury Museum, Dr John Yaldwyn (later Director of the National Museum of New Zealand), and others. Most of the fossil material collected was deposited in Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, where it was identified and catalogued by Ron Scarlett, but some now resides in the collections of Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand (formerly National Museum of New Zealand) in Wellington.
The sites were formed under slabs of limestone that have broken away from strata at the crest of the ridge, as part of a major land slump feature over the past 5000 or so years. Two major eruptions in the Taupo Volcanic Zone 80 km to the west of Hukanui are represented in the sediments accumulated in the rock shelters and small caves by Taupo ignimbrite (c 234 CE) and Waimihia Tephra (c 3000 BP), which provide excellent chronological controls for deposition of bones, eggshell, and other fossil material.
Excavations were resumed in 1995 by RNH under New Zealand Foundation for Research, Science & Technology contracts aimed at tracking the time course of the late Holocene extinctions of birds in New Zealand.
Publications
Holdaway, R.N.; Jones, M.D.; Beavan Athfield, N.R. 2002. Late Holocene extinction of the New Zealand owlet-nightjar Aegotheles novaezealandiae (Scarlett, 1968). Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 32(4): 653-667.
Holdaway, R.N.; Jones, M.D.; Beavan Athfield, N.R. 2002. Late Holocene extinction of Chenonetta finschi van Beneden, 1875, an endemic, almost flightless, New Zealand duck. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 32(4): 629-651.
Holdaway, R.N.; Roberts, R.G.; Beavan Athfield, N.R.; Olley, J.M.; Worthy, T.H. 2002. Optical dating of quartz sediments and accelerator mass spectrometry 14C dating of bone gelatin and moa eggshell: a comparison of age estimates for non-archaeological deposits in New Zealand. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 32(3): 463-505.
Holdaway, R.N.; Worthy, T.H. 2001. Publication of supplementary data for 14C AMS ages. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 31(2): 453-456.
Worthy, T.H.; Holdaway, R.N. 2000. Terrestrial fossil vertebrate faunas from inland Hawke’s Bay, North Island, New Zealand. Part 1. Records of the Canterbury Museum 14: 89-154.
Holdaway, R.N.; Beavan, N.R. 1999. Reliable 14C AMS dates on bird and Pacific rat Rattus exulans bone gelatin, from a CaCO3-rich deposit. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 29(3): 185-211.
Holdaway, R.N. 1999. A spatio-temporal model for the invasion of the New Zealand archipelago by the Pacific rat Rattus exulans. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 29(2): 91-105.