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Possible Egg With Embryo?


fishstick

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Hi,

I found this egg looking object a couple of years ago along the Jurassic Coast near Dorset, UK.

It kind of looks like an embryo and looks to have legs and/or arms; it has an approximate diameter of 5 cm.

I'm curious what you make of it.

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I'm afraid it's not an egg - it's a chert (flint) nodule the's formed in chalk or soft limestone (these are common on the south coast). The shape in the centre is all that's left of the original siliceous nucleus, which in this case was a sponge. The foetal resemblance is a coincidence I'm afraid.

These nodules form when an on organism with a silica skeleton (such as sponge) is preserved in a limestone (which is a different mineral, calcium carbonate). as fluids flow through the rock, silica is deposited round the nucleus, forming this concretion.

Flint is the name given to chert nodules found in chalk.

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Yes... they're common all over the UK from chalk deposits containing flint. In some places they're colloquially known as "Viking balls" from a false belief that clusters of them found together represent some purposeful usage by the guys with the horned helmets (although there is at least possible evidence for early use of the smaller ones as slingshot stones and documented later use as makeshift roundshot). Here's one I found in Norfolk:

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Roger

I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew);Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who [Rudyard Kipling]

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