Figure 3(b) Closer view of the quarry face of the south wall showing the oxidized limestone of the top of the Marlstone Rock Bed which is quarried as ‘Hornton Brown’ building stone. During two visits to the Hornton Quarries, it was established that fossil wood occurs alongside ammonite and belemnite index fossils (see aside below) in the ‘Hornton Stone’, the oxidized silty top of the Marlstone Rock Bed.

The ammonite recovered in the quarries is Many such belemnite fossils had been found during quarrying operations (Figure 6).

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When sampled, the fossil wood readily splintered, diagnostic of it still being ‘woody’ in spite of its impregnation with iron minerals during fossilisation.The main aim of the University of Waikato's Faculty of Science & Engineering is to promote and enhance its research activities.There are many active research groups within the Faculty, spanning a wide range of topics.Together these index fossils have, in evolutionary reckoning, established the rock containing them as being Early Jurassic and about 189 million years old. Three samples of fossil wood were collected from the south wall of Hornton Quarries, one from immediately adjacent to the belemnite fossil (Figure 5) during the first visit, and two from locations nearby during the second visit.All the fossil wood samples were from short broken lengths of what were probably branches of trees fossilised .