Seminars

#2617 The Miocene St Bathans Fauna and Wildlife in NZ’s Subantarctic Islands

Speaker Alan Tennyson

Date Saturday 22nd August 2026  10am-1pm

Venue Waikanae Presbyterian Church Hall, 43 Ngaio Road, Waikanae

Alan Tennyson has been a Vertebrate Curator at Te Papa specialising in birds and fossils, since 1996. Prior to this he worked in DOC’s Threatened Species Unit and was a marine campaigner for Forest and Bird. His work is focussed on seabird conservation, bird taxonomy and the origin and history of NZ’s fauna. His seabird work has taken him from Vanuatu to Antarctica. Recently he has been busy describing ancient fossils, including giant penguins from 60-million-year-old rocks and a great diversity of animals from a 15-million-year-old lake in Central Otago.

In the first session, the Miocene St Bathans Fauna, Alan will discuss the unique insight into the animals that lived in NZ about 15 million years ago gained from a study of deposits from this Central Otago region. They help us understand the history and origins of the fauna. In the second session, the wildlife of NZ’s Subantarctic Islands, Alan will relate some stories from his time on the islands and discuss some of the changes that have occurred because of pest eradication programmes. These islands are remote and windswept and have suffered from many human impacts, such as sealing and the introduction of predators, including cats and rats.