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DustinBreaux

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Hello!  

 

  I inherited this piece with the idea that it could possibly be a space rock.   I checked the magnetism and it has no magnetic properties whatsoever.   

 

  After closer examination with an open mind and a little imagination, I see a petrified baby dinosaur laid on its side with its neck possibly broken at the base of the skull.  Below what looks like the neck is a split section that looks like a chest cavity with a arm/leg on either side.   

 

. The strangest part is that there seems to be the head of another species resting on the side of the laid down fossil.  I see the right eye socket at the top of the head and the raised ridges on top of the skull back to the decapitation point.  (It almost looks like it could be a tiny horse laid on its side, but it looks like little fingers on the end of what looks like the front leg)  

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Well, you've used a LOT of imagination, but keep your mind open and be prepared to accept the fact that this is an interestingly shaped earth rock and nothing more.

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Greetings from the Lake of Constance. Roger

http://www.steinkern.de/

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Not a fossil, and not a meteorite.

Possibly slag, or an ironstone concretion. (Which are NOT usually magnetic).

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    Tim    -  VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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48 minutes ago, DustinBreaux said:

I inherited this piece with the idea that it could possibly be a space rock.

As mentioned above this is not a meteorite ("space rock") as it does not show the glassy fusion crust nor are there any signs of regmaglypts. We have a few members on this forum who also collect meteorites so possibly they'll spot this post and chime in as well.

 

https://meteorites.asu.edu/meteorites/meteorite-appearance

 

 

48 minutes ago, DustinBreaux said:

After closer examination with an open mind and a little imagination, I see a petrified baby dinosaur laid on its side with its neck possibly broken at the base of the skull.  Below what looks like the neck is a split section that looks like a chest cavity with a arm/leg on either side.

 

The strangest part is that there seems to be the head of another species resting on the side of the laid down fossil. I see the right eye socket at the top of the head and the raised ridges on top of the skull back to the decapitation point. (It almost looks like it could be a tiny horse laid on its side, but it looks like little fingers on the end of what looks like the front leg)

Open minds are good. Open minds are accepting of knowledge and the experienced opinions of experts who have spent a lot of time learning about subjects that we know little about. We have many subject experts here on the forum which we rely on for their reasoned opinions--minerals, artifacts, and fossil types of many types from a variety of geologic ages.

 

Open minds are also essential in creative endeavors. Authors and artists need to have vision and imagination to create their works. One aspect of open minds is to let our natural pattern matching hardware in our advanced brains "see" patterns and shapes that resemble things we are familiar with already. The phenomenon of pareidolia id what allows us to see interesting shapes in clouds or imagine faces or other recognizable objects in rock faces.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=pareidolia&tbm=isch

 

While the things we appear to see in everyday objects can be amusing, they can also lead to problems. We see a steady stream of unusually shaped objects from new members who find our forum while searching for explanations for the curiosities they've found. Your description seems to indicate that you are able to imagine something fantastical but have your doubts: "and a little imagination", "possibly", "what looks like", "seems to be", "it almost looks like". This is the basis of pareidolia--your brain picks up various patterns and your imagination fills in the details. We often get "impossible fossils" posted here for comment--things like "petrified hearts", "petrified snake heads with scales and eyes", "embryonic T-rex in dinosaur eggs". When we know little about a subject we are willing to believe much more is possible because we have no constraints to guide our analysis.

 

Your object is "strange" and seems to have multiple things going on (additional heads and the like) because pareidolia is allowing you to imaging all of these things. If you spot a cloud in the sky that seems to have a dragon head emerging from one side but the other side resembles a school bus you should be amused at the wonders of pareidolia and our remarkable minds that allow us to envision such things. If, however, we insist that there is indeed a dragon that just departed the bus in the sky then our minds are decidedly closed to accepting the phenomenon of pareidolia.

 

Your inherited object is a wonderfully shaped piece of (earth) rock that looks like it might have been sculpted and smoothed by running water. It is not extra-terrestrial nor is it in anyway a fossil but it is still an interestingly shaped rock that allows you to enjoy looking at it and imaging what shapes you see. I have several interesting shaped rocks in my collection that are not fossils but are still enjoyable to look at.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

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Iron slag is what I see. Tons of it around the southern tip of Lake Michigan and especially Indiana in the Gary area where the steel mills once were.

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Mark.

 

Fossil hunting is easy -- they don't run away when you shoot at them!

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6 hours ago, DustinBreaux said:

I inherited this piece with the idea that it could possibly be a space rock.   I checked the magnetism and it has no magnetic properties whatsoever.   

The vast majority of meteorites have a high iron content. That coupled with the lack of fusion crust disqualifies an extraterrestrial origin. 

 

It's a beautifully sculpted Earth stone.

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"Argumentation cannot suffice for the discovery of new work, since the subtlety of Nature is greater many times than the subtlety of argument." - Carl Sagan

"I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there." - Richard Feynman

 

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Definitely not a meteorite. 

Almost all meteorites have meteoric iron present in them - there are a few exceptions but they are extremely rare (one type are meteorites that originated from the Moon)

I have an L Chondrite (stony meteorite, "L" meaning low iron), it has light attraction to a neodymium magnet. A fridge magnet should not be used for the magnet test, they're not powerful enough. Obviously my iron meteorites have a very strong attraction to a magnet, so did my pallasite slices.

Fusion crust and regmaglypts, these can only form on the exterior of the meteor as it's travelling around 70,000kph through the atmosphere, the outer surface is being ablated and burnt. A meteor can explode as its travelling through the atmosphere creating many smaller meteors. Depending on their velocity and length of time exposed to the atmosphere, these smaller meteors will not develop fusion crust or regmaglypts. Some will have a face that was also the surface of the larger meteor and show fusion crust. My L Chondrite has the remains of fusion crust on one face.

Fusion crust can erode off the surface of a meteorite, exposure to the elements will do that. 

I made this thread yesterday if anyone is interested :)

Meteorites and tektites - Rocks & Minerals - The Fossil Forum

 

 

 

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