This is the incredible moment a fossil hunter shares what a 4 million-year-old lobster washed up on the beach looks like on January 1.

The filmer told Newsflare: "I was walking along a beach in New Zealand looking for fossils and found this small lobster half embedded in rock. It is roughly 4 million years old and had eroded out of a cliff. Usually, I have to prep fossils to expose the animal inside but this one is already very much exposed. This isn't a rare fossil and they are often found in this area; they are of the late-Miocene age. The rock that formed around them is called a concretion and one theory is that it gets formed when the animal gets covered in sediment and then decomposes. It forms something like a natural form of cement made up of calcium carbonate and silt particles."

I was walking along a beach in New Zealand looking for fossils and found this small lobster half embedded in rock. It is roughly 4 million years old and had eroded out of a cliff.
Usually I have to prep fossils to expose the animal inside but this one is already very much exposed.
This isn't a rare fossil and they are often found in this area, the are of late-Miocene age.
The rock that formed around them is called a concretion and one theory is that it gets formed when the animal gets covered in sediment and then decomposes. It forms something like a natural form of cement made up of calcium carbonate and silt particles.