Now, New Zealand is enabling more people to study the natural artifacts. The country is the first to host its own, nearly-comprehensive fossil database that’s open to the public.

Miocene Fossils Reveal Ancient Roots for New Zealand’s Endemic Mystacina (Chiroptera) and Its Rainforest Habitat. PLOS ONE, 17 Jun 2015 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0128871; ...

Skull of a shark-toothed dolphin. This large predator lived about 25 million years ago in what is now modern-day southern New Zealand. Mike Dickison/Wikipedia, CC BY-NC-ND Aotearoa’s rich fossil ...

This is corroborated in New Zealand’s shallow marine fossil record, where large drops in species richness over the last 40 million years have resulted in minimal loss of functional richness.