Yestin’s fixated on Surf Coast fossils

TO SOME people, hunting for fossils is a Saturday afternoon family activity, others might have never even considered the hobby, but for Surf Coast local Yestin Griffith and the hundreds of people who follow his “Fixated on Fossils” Facebook page, fossil hunting is a way of life.

Mr Griffith’s passion for fossil hunting was first ignited while he was teaching his two young daughters about dinosaurs and fossils.
“I took my family down to Jan Juc because I had learnt that you could find fossil shells down there. During that first day we found a lot of fossilised shells and echinoids, sea-urchin, so we had something for the kids to learn from,” he said.

“As I went to pick up my backpack to leave I found a fossil vertebra laying next to it. It turned out to be the vertebra of a Mammalodontidae, a primitive whale.

“So the following weekend I went back by myself for another look and found a slab of rock with a further nine pieces of Mammalodontidae vertebra and ribs in it.”

He reported all his findings to Museums Victoria, who confirmed them, and his days of fossil hunting began.

Years later, he has now had a number of scientifically important finds within Victoria. He has been involved in several of the museum’s excavations, worked in the vertebrate paleontology field crew and is now a volunteer lab assistant with Museums Victoria.

“Walking the beaches on the Surf Coast it is not unusual to see shells of ancient shell-fish and echinoids sea urchins scattered amongst the cliffs and protruding from out of rocks that have been battered by the sea,” Mr Griffith said.

“The erosion of our shorelines has revealed these amazing clues to our coastline’s past. If you look closely enough you may be lucky enough to find shark teeth amongst the oceanic rubble strewn between the rocks, or perhaps a tooth from the ancient whales known as Mammalodontidae.”

Mr Griffith said the cliffs and rocks of the Surf Coast were formed during a period of time known as the Oligocene-Miocene boundary, and date between 22 and 26 million years old.

“They were once the floor of an ancient sea that stretched inland as far as Hamilton in the western parts of Victoria and would have had Melbourne at about 50 metres under the sea surface in the central part of Victoria.”

Mr Griffith is passionate about sharing his knowledge and love of fossil hunting with the wider community, posting to nine Facebook community pages and regularly receiving thousands of comments and likes and interactions.

His own page “Fixated on Fossils” is for the keener fossil hunters, and is used as an informative/education platform for people in the Geelong, Bellarine, and Surf Coast regions.

“It also allows people who have fossil finds to be able to help identify their finds and allows me to be able to report any significant finds from the area back to Museums Victoria, so that they may have an idea of things found.”

To keep up-to-date with fossil findings on the Surf Coast, head to the Fixated on Fossils Facebook page.