Mathew Brown said he and his girlfriend were blown away by the discovery. Photo / Supplied
An Aucklander has stumbled across the discovery of a lifetime after spotting three moa footprints fossilised in sandstone.
Matthew Brown and his girlfriend Ava Peters were returning from an unsuccessful fishing trip and were walking alongside rocks when they both noticed something unusual imprinted into sandstone.
"We didn't actually catch any fish and we were coming back pretty disappointed."
The pair thought it may have been ostrich footprints and said when they realised they could be moa, they were stunned.
"We were pretty baffled at first, we didn't really know what it was. But that's [moa footprints] our only real option."
Brown who made the discovery at South Head on Sunday believes the rock had fallen after a landslip during last week's wet and wild weather,
"I think there had been a fresh slip and there was a heap of rocks that had fallen and I saw that."
Dr Mike Dickison who has seen the images Brown took, believes they are indeed imprints from the moa.
"The angle of the toes and the shape of the footprints match others I've seen in museum collections."
Dickison said lots of trace fossils are found in the cross-bedded sandstone deposits around Kaipara Head and said sandstone beds at South Head were once tidal flats
"So these look like the footprints of a moa walking across wet mud or sand, which was then filled with sand which hardened into sandstone."
Dickison said the imprints appear to be the moulds of footprints which makes for an even more trustworthy find.
"The fact that they're moulds makes them more trustworthy, as these would be much harder to fake than imitations made by carving some footprints into sandstone."
Dickison is a former curator of natural history at Whanganui Regional Museum, in charge of the museum's moa bone collection.
He noted it was interesting the imprints were not that deep, suggesting the moa was walking on the wet sand.
After taking a few photos and making a mental note of where the discovery was found, the pair walked back to their bach at Mosquito Bay and told others about their discovery.
Brown said Peter's mother has placed tarpaulin over the footprints to ensure they are protected since they are currently in soft sandstone.
He has contacted the museum to see what they should do next.
Brown said it is something he has never experienced before.
"It was an upside to our bad day fishing."