Modern Vespa

I found this not-all-that-remarkable rock up high on a shelf I was demolishing in my workshop, left behind by a previous owner. He was a definite science-y guy, working on instruments and optics for ground- and space-based observatories (including the Hubble) so I could see him having an interesting fossil lying around.

Or, it could just be a rock. I'm not getting my hopes up.

The one interesting bit about this rock that makes me think it might be a coprolite is that at some point in time, this mass appears to have been less-than-completely-solid. The bottom is flat, and formed in such a way that suggests this was a pile of something before it was a rock.

Anyone have any experience in this field?

Jess.. cdwise has a rock killer for a husband.. she might be the one to ask.

The flat bottom is hard to get a good picture of, as you don't really get a sense for its shape until you've turned it around in the light a few times. Here are two more pictures that attempt to capture that, though.

Was it in two parts on the shelf, or did that happen as part of finding it?

Update: a neodymium magnet is weakly attracted to it. It's not super strong, but enough for the magnet to stick to the side of the rock.

That probably suggests that it's not a coprolite, but perhaps merely a piece of magnetite.

It fell off the shelf as I was demolishing it, and broke.

It does have the look of a coprolite. I have one in my therapy office that has been split and polished on the split face. Kind of pretty actually.

It's kind of a private joke for me, as we therapists often help people dig up and work through old s**t from their pasts, and I have a 65-million-year-old piece of it sitting on the shelf.

So now you think it's space shit?

Hah!

Yes. It's dinosaur shit from dinosaurs on another planet!

Further update: while a magnet is attracted to it, the rock itself is not detectably magnetic. Putting a paper clip to the side of the rock, there's no indication of attraction.

Wouldn't that tend to rule out magnetite? (he asks to the audience of armchair geologists assembled...)

Moon Rock???? It seems a lot of those are turning up of late.

Where? I though the supply of moon rocks was fairly tightly controlled?

(But no, this doesn't have much indication of being a moon rock).

Updater #437: To rule out the possibility of it being a meteorite (which I highly doubt -- I'm just not that lucky) I tried a plain refrigerator magnet on the advice of this website. Apparently, neodymium magnets are so strong that they will be attracted to even trace amounts of iron in normal terrestrial rocks.

Unfortunately, this made the picture muddier. An ordinary refrigerator magnet is, in fact, attracted to the rock.

(No, I'm really not going to let myself start thinking that this is a meteorite...)

Looks like shit to me!


If it is magnetic, it is likely an iron ore, looks a lot like the ones you can find on google.

So, unless you found evidence of the dinosaur that ate Detroit... it is just probably iron ore.

I was under the impression that iron ore wouldn't attract a magnet?

Magnetite and hematite will certainly attract a magnet, and are themselves magnetic. Since a plain steel paperclip won't stick to the rock, though, I'm not sure that's likely.

Iron ore can be attracted to magnets. It is not itself a magnet in most cases.

IF the iron ore is totally oxidized, it will not be attracted to a magnet.

Nickel ore can be too, but it has a very regular crystalline shape usually.

Interesting. There's iron something in it, as there is what looks to be oxidation in the center.

Some guy, who isn't a crook, gave a lot away.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/11/five-missing-moon-rocks-discovered-in-storage-in-minnesota/

The way to detect a small ammount of magnetisim is with a compass.

I saw the face of Jesse in the rock, beard and all.

I think you're onto something.

Or a petrified steak.

i do and may send him a link to this thread but he is out of the country with less than stellar Internet connectivity and won't be home for 19 more days.

It does look like a meteorite. Watched to many of that series where they go hunting for them. They used one of those wand things you use at the beach to find money. When that thing went over one it squealed like a pig. They had theirs modified but had to use a regular one in some weird country and that one worked without any mods. If you have access to one see if it makes any noises when you run the wand over it. Big bucks if it is. Dinosaur shit looks cool tho. Either way find a good place to display it. Good luck

I thought it was impossible to polish a turd.

It's actually quite easy, provided you petrify it first, then let it sit deep underground for 65 million years or so.

A common misconception.

This being about the strangest post I've seen on this site, I'm pretty sure there's a punchline coming...

Yeah, I actually saw that Mythbusters episode a while back.

Figured that few enough people had seen it to not spoil my feeble joke.
Guess not.

Sorry, man. Dispelling misconceptions is a knee-jerk reaction for geeks like me.

No worries... it WAS a pretty feeble joke.

I have consulted with a paleontologist who works for me. His take is that it is a ROCK. The black outer ring appears to be an iron mineral --magnetite or hematite -- and the interior part looks more crystalline to him.

Says nothing would point to a coprolite, as far as he could see.

Nope. No punchline. If I had found this rock in a field, I wouldn't have thought much of it. It was sitting on a shelf in a workshop that still had much of the ephemera of its previous occupant (who moved to a nursing home, perhaps hastily, in has advanced age). Given his apparent interests, it seems likely to me that this rock had some significance to him.

Or maybe it's just a rock. I dunno. It has some interesting features, though (the shape primary among them) so I thought I'd dig around a bit to see what I could figure out.

Thanks for that bit of information.

Doesn't look it to me either. How dense is it? If you have a strong lens try to take a look at the crystal structure. If you can see crystal structure it probably is not Coprolite as the relatively fast mineralization results in cryptocrystaline sized crystals. Also if you have some dilute HCl (~10%) put a drop on it if you get a fizz there is a chance it is Coprolite.


Trying to determine minerals from an internet photo is kind of like tracking down scooter problems over the interwebs. The darker outer concretions and colored interior lead me to think that it is agate...a common metomorphic form of quartz (although igneous agates are not uncommon).

While not an "armchair" geologist, as a carbonate hydrogeologist these minerals are not my speciality. Now give me some limestones and dolomite and we can talk!

That's a Tennessee Sex Stone.

segue my all time favorite cartoon animation.....

lol!

Google says there's no such thing. Or, rather, the results are... not quite what I expected.

Excellent! Thanks for the consult.

So, looks like not a coprolite. No biggy.

The thing that drew my attention to begin with (other than the mystery of why the previous owner had this rock in the first place) was the very particular form of the flat bottom, along with some of the detail at the edges of that bottom. It's very much as if someone took a big chunk of potter's clay and slapped it down on the table, where it hardened. Except that it's obviously not clay, of course.

You can see some of that detail here in the closeup below. I'm still curious (from an academic standpoint) how this rock might have been formed, and why it resembles something that was once soft and pliable and is now hard. I have no agenda here, I'm just genuinely fascinated by stuff like this.