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Hey all, I'm a newbie so HI! I found this object in the Laramie formation in Colorado (approx 70m old). It was by itself, but feet away from a fossil bed. No other pieces were found vertically and it was found below a vegetative strata that is chock full of plant bits.. I mean heavily loaded with plants. There are coal seams in it too. The holes are interesting: is it fossil or pumice? If pumice.. it's nuts because nearest volcano is 200+ miles away (which erupted approx 4,000 yrs ago). The object weighs slight less or same as fossil (roughly), def not heavy like decomposing granite. The black object is the pumice or fossil, an example of the vegetative strata is here too.. light brown with darker patches of plants material. What cha think?

Solving the mystery of floating rocks Glenn Roberts Jr., Berkeley Lab, University of California, May 18, 2017 The paper is: Fauria, K.E., Manga, M. and Wei, Z., 2017. Trapped bubbles keep pumice afloat and gas diffusion makes pumice sink. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 460, pp.50-59. Official abstract of paper Online PDF of paper 1 Online PDF of paper 2 Yours, Paul H.

Found near Pierre shale. Not sure what it is. About 7in long. Any insight would be great.

hello all, I found a lot of this specific type of rock and I thought they could be fossils. Now I'm not so sure. They have what appears to have a spongy inside and flat outside, on the sides that are still there. I tried to take pictures to show them well. A few of the pieces have two "lobes" at one end and the lobes appear to be splitting. They are all the same color, though some are dry and some are damp still. I was trying to figure this out on my own, and I thought it could possibly be coal (if not a fossil), but i really don't know how to test it. My husband did try to light it on fire... it did not catch fire. If you need more pictures, let me know. I got these in a river in Williamson County Tennessee. I believe the only dinosaur we have that's been found is hadrosaur specifically edmontosaurs. There have been multiple types of megafauna mammals like sloths, rhinos, and mammoths. If these are nothing, I will be sad, but at least I'll know not to pick these up anymore! LOL. Thanks! IMG_4308.heic

I found this in a sand pit near Kalkaska Michigan as a kid. It was in the vally wall around lake Skegamog. Next to it were a number of sand stones containing shell fossils. I don't know if it matters, but the pit wall I dug into was about 75 feet below the undisturbed grade. The stone I believe to be a sponge is approximately nine inches tall and weighs approximately 9.5 pounds. The chamber's are not uniform in size so I doubt it's being coral. The fact that there were no igneous rocks present makes me doubt pumice. I apologize that I could put up more pictures and close ups, but there was a limit on the upload size.

A close-up look at an uncommon underwater eruption January 10, 2018, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution http://www.whoi.edu/news-release/a-close-up-look-at-a-rare-underwater-eruption https://phys.org/news/2018-01-close-up-uncommon-underwater-eruption.html https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180110141320.htm The paper is: Rebecca Carey, S. Adam Soule, Michael Manga, et al., 2018. The largest deep-ocean silicic volcanic eruption of the past century. Science Advances 10 Jan 2018: Vol. 4, no. 1, e1701121 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1701121 http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/1/e1701121 A related and interesting paper is: Simkin, T., 1993. Terrestrial volcanism in space and time. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 21(1), pp. 427-452. (Volume publication date May 1993) https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ea.21.050193.002235 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1993AREPS..21..427S Yours, Paul H.

How X-rays helped to solve mystery of floating rocks in the ocean. Experiments at Berkeley Lab show scientists how pumice can remain buoyant for years, UC Berkeley, Berkeley Lab http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/05/23/how-x-rays-helped-to-solve-mystery-of-floating-rocks/ https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170523144110.htm Fauria, K.E., Manga, M. and Wei, Z., 2017. Trapped bubbles keep pumice afloat and gas diffusion makes pumice sink. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 460, pp. 50-59. http://seismo.berkeley.edu/~manga/fauriaetal2017.pdf Yours, Paul H.