North Australian FISH FINDER TM forums

Took Shark Girl and the mudskippas to Gunn Point for a few days camping. The beach was awesome and the weather perfect.

We were looking for shells one day when we found a fossil. That was way exciting and Shark Girl and me kept looking and finding more.

Turns out most of them are Mud Lobsters. About 100k years old. But we also found petrified wood, fossilised shellfish and a fossilised crab claw. So cool!!!!

From what we could find out, thousands of years ago Gunn Point was turned upside down by a cataclysmic cyclone. Killled everything in the area and covered them in mud. The area was a mangrove swamp and the nutrient rich mud contained the right substances to make fossils. Awesome!!

Check out the pics. And that crab claw may look fragile but when you pick it up you realise its solid stone.

What a great find...

Cool!

There is also a spot on the Daly with similar looking "fossils" The samples I have found look like a cross between a redclaw and a cherabin. It looks like the area they are on the Daly is part of a very old river course that is slowly being exposed as the river widens. There are not as many as there were 20 years ago as they are slowly being washed in. What is peculiar about them is that they are not true fossils in that when you slice them there is only rock (clay I assume) below the surface. They are very hard and a diamond blade is needed to cut them. They are often shaped like a foot ball and this is probably caused by the rolling effect of tides and wet season run off.

Great post

100,000 years time on the Daly, fossilised Nils Masters

Matt Flynn wrote: 100,000 years time on the Daly, fossilised Nils Masters

That'll keep the scientists guessing Might totally stuff up the theory of evolution.

cheers Fishfanatic, Tezza, Matty and Fishnchick

Rossco thanks for putting up the pics! Really interesting to see how the river has eroded your specimens. They are the same creature as the ones at Gunn Point (I can tell from the shape and texture of the claws and anyway I am now a self professed expert on the matter lol). Its a mud lobster or "Thalasina Anomala". I found another article that thought they were only about 10k years old. Hmmmm I'm sure its wrong. They must be far more ancient and interesting than that!

Anyway we're gonna keep looking for them cause its more fun than sitting at home watching reruns of Friends!

And who knows....maybe we'll find the fossilised remains of a giant flesh eating Pleistocene barramundi with armour plated sides, a spiral horn and talloned vestigal limbs in order to roam the prehistoric swamp in search of unwary dinosaurs to boof!!........and whats the bet those dinosaurs look like big stoopid nilseys....

Cheers
Mud

Found some of these recently, what's the best way to crack the balls open?

Very cool mate. Straight to the pool room

those fossils ... i hear are the discarded shells of your mud lobsters probably 5000 / 6000 years old .. as the mud lobster discards a covering the chemicals in the mud get to work on the shell and starts converting it into what you have.a petrified discarded shell ( notice the back of the shell is split where the mud lobster has slipped out of his old shell) there are still the same mud lobsters living in the mud but not often seen .
we used to think they were scorpions because we always held them upside down.
they are found at race course creek charles point etc ..but gunn point seems the best in quality and quantity.. the age has to do with when the seas settled down since the last ice age a few thousand years ago ..
your collection is really nice collection
the museum put out a fact sheet about them about 15/20 years ago

We used to find them along Casuarina beach when I was a kid in the early to mid 80's had sh!tloads of fun playing in the old army bunker on the beach just past the surf club but I don't think it's there anymore. Used to find heaps of old bullet shells of all sizes too.

we took some to the museum and they took them from us. I would keep it quiet if you want to keep them

you just didnt yell at them loudly enough .. they would have returned them if you had

.

Interesting! Their latin name is Thassalina Anomala and they are freshwater crayfish. As the Australian continental plate is moving very slowly north, (about 2 cm a year) they are now in saltwater. They are roughly 10,000 years old.

As told to me by a leading paleonologist (JCU). We have a creek near Mackay that is full of them.