What is that smell?

[Crgold36]

What is it about a rock fossil that smells so putrid? A fossil i have stinks to high heaven and almost unbearable to be next to it, especially when it's wet. It's like the smell of dirt but dirt will have a poopy smell to it this has like a high metallic sort of smell and I cant understand why it smells so bad. It smells like a ore of some sort is only way i can explain it. 

[Wendell Ricketts]

Hard to know without seeing/smelling it, but my two thoughts are: It isn't a fossil, and you've got a piece of something relatively recent in which organic tissue is still decomposing; or it's from an area where methane gas, oil, or some other petroleum product has infiltrated the soil.

 

W

[Mediospirifer]

Some minerals have a scent. Sulfur crystals have a bit of rotten egg smell to them, though not as strong as what you're describing. It might also be a chunk of industrial slag, although I don't have a suggestion for what type.

 

Can you post pictures? Also, can you tell us anything about where it came from? 

 

 

[hadrosauridae]

3 hours ago, Wendell Ricketts said:

Hard to know without seeing/smelling it, but my two thoughts are: It isn't a fossil, and you've got a piece of something relatively recent in which organic tissue is still decomposing; or it's from an area where methane gas, oil, or some other petroleum product has infiltrated the soil.

 

W

 

This was my first thought as well.  However, its possible its an actual fossil and the odor is from the matrix.  Whenever I work on fossils in matrix I can smell the area the came from.  The Hell Creek I hunt has a very distinct smell.  Depending on the location and layer, the Green River fm fish I work have a noticeable petroleum odor as layers are split open and the quarry operator has seen actual small pockets of oil.

[Ludwigia]

Yes, it's true. Some fossils can stink, or at least the matrix that it's in. We would need to know exactly what you have in order to determine the scent

[Bobby Rico]

I have some bone material that smells from a cave. It was found in the Victorian times and still  smells 120 years later. It has a very strong petrichor smell to it.
 

It could be bacterial in the matrix that is smelling. 
 

all the best Bobby 

Edited April 26, 2021 by Bobby Rico

[FossilDAWG]

14 minutes ago, Bobby Rico said:

It has a very strong petrichor smell to it.

From the web: "Petrichor is the term coined by Australian scientists in 1964 to describe the unique, earthy smell associated with rain. It is caused by the water from the rain, along with certain compounds like ozone, geosmin, and plant oils."

 

I learned a new word today.  Thanks!

 

Don

[hadrosauridae]

I learned the word petrichor from watching Dr. Who.

 

[Crgold36]

Sorry I forgot to upload pics that would have been more helpful. I'm a newly newb here on fossil forum! I love the feedback already! Wow! I really have a lot more to learn. I would say YES It is like a earthy cave smell, only when it gets wet and personally it's smells a bit metallic scent to it like a copper penny. This rock has fossils in it, only sea life type ones that are noticeable like molluscs lobster crabs ECT. just from what I can see what looks like claws in the pic below. it's hollow in some spots too. I dont want to break any of them because the fossils themselves are rock not just imprints of them. I want to say it's like half rock half petrified wood because the texture doesn't feel of rock and has some tree trunk look to parts of it, but i assumed because it's next to a big tree that roots grew through out it or something. The flat edge in the pics below is the interesting part to me I don't know how it would have naturally formed like that. 

[Crgold36]

I forgot to say where it's from. We found it in a high slopped wooded area on a trail in the ravine part of the hills in the city of Seattle away from really any body of water other then a lake close by. The Ocean and Puget Sound is quite far away to have sea life fossils in it. I noticed just recently that the bottom of the boulder has cracked at the bottom which makes me wonder if seismic activity caused it to crack since we are close to the fault line. Like I said im very excited to find out the geology of it i think it would be real important to the area since its a heavily populated city and its slim to none to find anything of importance when there's less public land to explore.

[Ludwigia]

If you say that you dug it out from between tree roots, then the humus in the ground surrounding the rock has probably permeated it with the help of the ground water, which would certainly cause an unpleasant odor. Maybe if you bathe it in a javex solution and rinse it afterwards thoroughly it may help to dispel the smell.

[jpc]

javex = bleach  ?

 

[Ludwigia]

1 hour ago, jpc said:

javex = bleach  ?

 

yup.

[hadrosauridae]

IT looks like a typical marine bed fossil.  You are correct that it will be filled with shells and corral and crinoids and many other types of marine life.  These can often have a lot hollow spaces as well so I can see it having natural loam bio-matter that has made its way into those spaces and becomes noticeable when it gets wet.

[Wrangellian]

Petrichor is a smell that people tend to like... I know I do. Natural earthy smells in general are not unpleasant to me and I don't know why anyone would find them so. However the OP says there is a metallic smell, which is another story. I'm not sure how a plain old sedimentary rock (which normally smell nice, to me) would acquire such an odor except by contact with metallic chemicals or solutions, or near-contact with strongly smelling substances. I have a rock that I received from a TFF member which smells of oil as it was apparently kept in a garage with oily things in it, but it is not stained with oil, it seems to have acquired the smell just by being in proximity. I still smell oil when I open the drawer it's in. It's a kind of fossil that might not stand up well to washing and I'm not sure a simple wash will work anyway, but I can tolerate the smell of oil so I'll leave it as is.