Motunau Beach (Greta Siltstone)
A small Canterbury beach community an hour north of Christchurch sitting on the Pliocene Greta Siltstone — one of the Southern Hemisphere's best beach localities for shark teeth, including Carcharodon megalodon. A New Zealand Geopreservation Inventory site.
Walk south from the Motunau Beach settlement at low tide. Search the wave-cut platform and concretion-bearing layers for teeth weathering free. Concretions sometimes contain articulated fish.
Public beach access from Motunau Beach village. Casual surface collecting is tolerated for personal interest but Department of Conservation rules apply to scientifically significant material.
New Zealand's Protected Objects Act 1975 governs fossils. Personal-interest surface collecting on the foreshore is generally OK; export and significant specimens are regulated.
- Cliff collapse from undercut bluffs
- Cold southerly fronts arrive fast
- Rocky terrain
- Time visits to a 0.5m or lower tide — the productive shelf is otherwise underwater
- Concretions are often more productive than loose lag
- Report any rare or articulated finds to Canterbury Museum
Shark teeth findable here
Trophy = headline find · Rare = real score · Uncommon = some trips · Common = most trips.
Also findable here
The beachcomber's bonus round — what else the geology gives up.
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