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Thanks guys, it's all your fault!


GeneralAnesthetic

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Maybe a couple of weeks ago or so, I posted some pictures of oddities and such that my mind had assembled a wonderful history of. But was lacking in substantiated evidence to suggest it was anything other than a tasty delusion, likely inspired by the heat, sweat in my eyes and this child-like wonder that was being driven by the "ooooooh pretty" crystal pickin. I had found enough that there was definitely a story to be told and the local history I could find seemed a bit chinsey. Bottom line, until I posted here, it was a great idea and I had very little work to do to prove anything until y'all were like, "uh yeah, don't look like it, prove it" basically anyways. "sigh" I thought to myself, oh great, here we go again. Yet another hobby I get into obsessively as a personal expert that really is educated, talented and what nots. But the problem instantly became that I had realized that without study of what others in the past had done before me, I could not realistically assemble a modified theory. Certainly not from the couch geologist pov. 

 

I am a high (dys)functioning autistic, with a kagillion hobbies and or prior obsessions, which is my only real qualification. What is that? Well, my talent is that I see things in front of me that others don't. I am high reasoning I guess you could say, does it get me anywhere? No. That's probably where my other diagnosis comes in with combined ADHD. I'm all over the place. But guess what, it's all your guys(es) fault! 

 

It really was a loving push into what I have become today. Less than two weeks later I have have stopped looking at concretions and other oddities and instead have begun an extremely in depth look at the forces that create fossils and other minerals. Oh, btw. Most of this originated because I was surveying for precious stones and gold............go figure right! Now I was into literally everything that could possibly be involved in the formation of the planet, it's chemistry and catastrophic history. I felt that this was necessary to fully understand what you will see in fossils and how the planet reclaims them. Once again, it's all your fault!

 

There is an absolutely massive amount of material to be referenced and checked. Theories to be studied, looking for that "one" marker that debunks and lends more credo to what I am assembling. This is truly staggering. I am looking at every previous theorem, even the ones that did not get so much traction. This is blending to create a picture that I believe will help people understand just how special the Earth is. Oh, and that the Human race is NOT going to survive! Eventually the planet will die! This is already a widely accepted theory. If we got hit by a meteorite in the Pacific Ocean it would prolong our existence though. Would kill a lot of people, but would give the core something to do. It's losing it's momentum. Quite fascinating really, and it's all your fault!

 

The list to date, of angles that I am covering in this study. 

 

Tectonic Theory

Aquifers

Stone Chemistry

Volcanism

Celestial Impacts/Shock Metamorphism 

Faults (who's or whom)

(***Unique Angle I Cannot Divulge Until Publication***)

Delineating viable Vs. just plain cooky theories

Global influence from Regional Events

Especially, Erratics and Unconformities in the landmass

 

The desk work is mostly complete, field observations are the next obvious step. I will be teaming up with the College I attend to have this study completed under the guidance of a professor. Making it viable. Because of technology advances I will need to start documenting in a much different way, taking samples with a GPS locator to prove the collection is legit. There is so much, and maybe I have covered everything I should. But this obsession has me literally almost every moment, thinking geology/paleontology/chemistry/physics/math and my brain is actually starting to hurt regularly. I don't mind though. 

 

I wrote this post as a Thank You to the ones who sternly but logically posed the questions that resulted in me learning. I am grateful! I still feel like there is more to add to this. The equation doesn't seem big enough. If any of you kind folks would care to contribute any logical shoves in literally "any" direction, please chime in. The equation I am trying to solve is this. 

 

How to better identify and stack events in a timeline. How to better understand the effects on debris from a past event that is changed by a later event. This culminates into what I see would be a better understanding of localities, by understanding how events in geological time interacted with each other. 

 

It's been fun, and rewarding. Here is a little of what I have discovered so far. I still need to get to the location to take photographs and talk to locals. But I believe I have found the impact crater for the Willamette Valley Meteorite. I am still working on determining the angle of entry into the atmosphere and possibly the speed to allow it to bounce to West Linn, Oregon. Just north of the impact, in Morrow County, a 40lb chunk of meteorite was found in a ditch by a farmer. Which suggests the meteorite split into two pieces with the inferior piece bouncing to the North into Morrow County. Which the crater also appears shows evidence of. Angle of entry, or at least the bounce appears to be ~18 degrees. The axial tilt of the Earth is ~23.5 degrees. I know nothing about entry into the atmosphere, but thought that with the possibility of the bounce angle being entirely different from the angle of entry, then this might just be the reason why it didn't burn up completely. Check it out! It's good at least in my imagination!

 

Lot's more to come, thanks everyone! Please, even bad feedback! It completes a tricky puzzle. 

 

Willamette3.JPG.49676601a1eaf9e4cb248522fa853320.JPG

 

Willamette.JPG

Willamette2.JPG

Willamette4.jpg

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Aye, Laddie, that's the ticket! Research!
It's a journey, not a destination :)

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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2 hours ago, Auspex said:

Aye, Laddie, that's the ticket! Research!
It's a journey, not a destination :)

I agree. I sometimes find that I am not able to answer a question (reach a destination) after much research. The skills and knowledge that I obtain (a journey) while researching helps me answer questions that I have not officially asked myself yet.

My goal is to leave no stone or fossil unturned.   

See my Arizona Paleontology Guide    link  The best single resource for Arizona paleontology anywhere.       

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As John Denver put it (in his ballad to Jacque Cousteau's research ship Calypso): "Seeking the answers to questions unknown". :)

"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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What you're doing sounds like fun and very self entertaining. I also entertain many theories about my surroundings and the millions/billions of years full of events and changes that shaped the land, remnants of which can be discovered nearby, on the web... Google Earth, etc. It's an endeavor that pleases me. If anyone else is entertained by this, that's great but not necessary.

To discover a chunk of meteorite, that would be something. But as they say, the journey to that discovery is the real everything.

I congratulate you for being on a quest.

"Journey through a universe ablaze with changes" Phil Ochs

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Just wanted to pick a few strands in your post. :) 

 

It is not a matter of the size of an equation (which is simply a question of computation, not necessarily complexity, and so in mathematics might be deemed trivial as conceptually a human with infinite time could resolve it by hand), but of the number of factors in what you are doing, which I don't see as a necessary condition of an equation per se. Equations are part of defined functions. For example differential equations (DEs) and partial differential equations (PDEs) - or what can be called "field equations." From this may be derived some predictions, although it is debatable if someone like Newton relied on those at all to introduce gravity to explain planetary motion, and which Einstein had to fix for the problem of Mercury's orbit and remove the mysticism of the "spooky action at a distance." 

 

The multiple moving parts of this may be more part of probabilistic analysis. There is stuff in your "angles" section that seem disparate and don't belong, such as the assignation of "fault," which has zero meaning in either science or mathematics. Causation might be a better term, and may strip this of any relative notion of "fault." However, the challenge in establishing causation has to meet much more stringent criteria than, say, correlation. It will come down to the methodology, and what theorems (you did not say) are being challenged. The determination of viable and kooky theories is an entirely different function, and one that can be determined simply by the success or failure of their predictions.

 

Keep in mind that scientific theory is in the business of explaining HOW, not WHY. This explanation must serve in making predictions that allow for it to be tested. Theories are a form of rigorous story that explain that HOW which is the basis of the predictions by which the theory can be falsified. This will generally be pegged to some unified or general theory. It is the province of engineering to make stuff work, again without knowing precisely why, as that is immaterial to the goal of engineering. It is for that reason that medical science is not fully a science in the proper sense as it does not have a unified or general theory of the body to explain the HOW., and is more precisely a form of engineering. 

 

...How to Philosophize with a Hammer

 

 

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4 hours ago, GeneralAnesthetic said:

It's losing it's momentum.

 The core does lots of strange things and it’s not fully understand how the core does anything and why and how. Hard to make good assumptions about something we can not directly study. It’s also not known how bad it would actually be if it became still and the dynamo went down. Most people could die from a big enough meteor strike, but I find it useless to dwell on it. No point in worrying about death when you have a life to live. 

 

I’m naturally skeptical, but who knows? The crater is very much crater-like, though many things could cause it. It could be an old caldera, or an ancient lake. Could simply be a strange erosion pattern. But, can’t hurt to check.

“...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin

Happy hunting,

Mason

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Very cool research topic! I hadn't heard about a second piece of the Willamette meteorite being found; that suggests (to me) that there should be more. Can you post (or PM me) a link to a paper linking the smaller piece to Willamette? I ask because the Meteoritical Bulletin database (link here) doesn't list any pairings for Willamette. It doesn't say much about it, really. So, I'm curious about the second piece.

 

I've read a good bit about meteorites and crater formation, though I'm by no means an expert (or even close). I can think of a few impact scenarios to explain the positions of two meteorites and an apparent crater.

 

To confirm or disprove the apparent crater, you will need to look at the rocks on site (as you know). The single most important feature to look for is shocked quartz. This may require a drill core to find, especially if the depression became filled with water and lakebed sediments. Shatter cones radiating out from the site and breccias or impact melt glass are other signs of impact. If you can get a drill core and find one or more, that's supporting evidence! If you get a deep core and find none, the feature probably isn't an impact crater, although it probably has interesting geology in its own right.

 

Keep in mind that meteorites often split as they fall, and the larger pieces fly further due to momentum. You could be looking at a case where the original mass split during flight, and the direction of flight went from the smaller piece towards the larger, with the craterlike feature being unrelated. You could have an impact crater, where the main mass broke off in flight and dropped first, and the second piece is shrapnel from the impact explosion. I've seen the Willamette meteorite on display in the AMNH, and I have to say that it doesn't (to my moderately educated eye) look like shrapnel to me, so I would suspect that it impacted separately from the cratering mass. Yes, this does happen; one fall where a lot of pieces came down including several that cratered is the Sikhote-Alin impact.

 

Think of these ideas as alternative hypotheses that you need to take into account in your research. Good luck, and have fun!

 

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6 hours ago, WhodamanHD said:

 The core does lots of strange things and it’s not fully understand how the core does anything and why and how. Hard to make good assumptions about something we can not directly study. It’s also not known how bad it would actually be if it became still and the dynamo went down. Most people could die from a big enough meteor strike, but I find it useless to dwell on it. No point in worrying about death when you have a life to live. 

 

I’m naturally skeptical, but who knows? The crater is very much crater-like, though many things could cause it. It could be an old caldera, or an ancient lake. Could simply be a strange erosion pattern. But, can’t hurt to check.

Yes, images from above are great and all but I'm not holding onto much hope until I can get on site and look for physical evidence. I'll probably get to this last, because I was not looking for this when it popped up in Oregon history I was reading. 

 

7 hours ago, Kane said:

Keep in mind that scientific theory is in the business of explaining HOW, not WHY. This explanation must serve in making predictions that allow for it to be tested. Theories are a form of rigorous story that explain that HOW which is the basis of the predictions by which the theory can be falsified. This will generally be pegged to some unified or general theory. It is the province of engineering to make stuff work, again without knowing precisely why, as that is immaterial to the goal of engineering. It is for that reason that medical science is not fully a science in the proper sense as it does not have a unified or general theory of the body to explain the HOW., and is more precisely a form of engineering. 

Definitely with you here. I refer to this as an "equation" only because there are factors, operations, then comes order of said operations. It will be daunting to figure which elements belong where, and quite honestly I don't think I will be able to compile this on my own. I agree that the "why" is irrelevant. Though there is a why to be considered as the immediate effects of any event dissipate, as to understand and predict outcomes of future events. This is me over-thinking as well. I'm sure there will be issues that I bench for the moment because it will help to create a picture that has less angles. It's not a kaleidoscope, only looks like one.  

 

The faults mention was a joke ;) I believe faults are fractures from volcanic and impact related events. Gathering information to attempt a novice explanation to a ~200 mile pattern of slippage that occurred some time ago, after California re-assembled and tectonics pushed it back together. I will also attempt to explain a difference between tectonics and continental drift due to a fractured landmass that could only have happened after a massive impact. 

 

But more to the point, you have all been great in how you have helped me direct my attention. As for this, it's no small task and will be a rather extensive paper. It is summer though and we are on break. Come Fall we return to campus and at that time I will seek guidance from our science department. 

 

Thanks again everyone!

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10 minutes ago, Mediospirifer said:

To confirm or disprove the apparent crater, you will need to look at the rocks on site (as you know). The single most important feature to look for is shocked quartz. This may require a drill core to find, especially if the depression became filled with water and lakebed sediments. Shatter cones radiating out from the site and breccias or impact melt glass are other signs of impact. If you can get a drill core and find one or more, that's supporting evidence! If you get a deep core and find none, the feature probably isn't an impact crater, although it probably has interesting geology in its own right.

A bit of quick looking that I should have done to begin with. The two meteorites are NOT related. Albeit I guess there is a super-uber slim chance they bounced from the same place. But the facts are,

 

Willamette meteorite is Iron

Morrow County meteorite is Stoney

 

Does not mean the impression near Fox Oregon isn't an impact crater. I need to stop off at the school to have the Math Prof. help me brush up on using Miller's indices to prove shocked features. I have other samples of glass and shocked material but it is from 130 miles to the east. Most of this research started because I could not fathom the quantity and state of the agatized, crystallized and opalized material. I've been all through Nevada, Utah and California to all kinds of boomtowns and gem sites. I've never seen anything like what I'm seeing. Does it mean anything? Probably not, but if I pretend I was never wrong it's a fantastic discovery none the less. lol

 

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19 hours ago, Raggedy Man said:

Its nice to see a fellow high (dys) functional autistic fossil hunter with ADHD.:fistbump:

wOrd :fistbump:

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16 hours ago, DPS Ammonite said:

I agree. I sometimes find that I am not able to answer a question (reach a destination) after much research. The skills and knowledge that I obtain (a journey) while researching helps me answer questions that I have not officially asked myself yet.

Absolutely, being wrong only adds value to learning what is correct. It's probably on the top of my list for critical thinking tactics. I'd rather find out every single way to be wrong before I find out what is right and not right about it. 

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16 hours ago, Innocentx said:

What you're doing sounds like fun and very self entertaining. I also entertain many theories about my surroundings and the millions/billions of years full of events and changes that shaped the land, remnants of which can be discovered nearby, on the web... Google Earth, etc. It's an endeavor that pleases me. If anyone else is entertained by this, that's great but not necessary.

To discover a chunk of meteorite, that would be something. But as they say, the journey to that discovery is the real everything.

I congratulate you for being on a quest.

Thank you!

9 hours ago, Mediospirifer said:

Very cool research topic! I hadn't heard about a second piece of the Willamette meteorite being found; that suggests (to me) that there should be more. Can you post (or PM me) a link to a paper linking the smaller piece to Willamette? I ask because the Meteoritical Bulletin database (link here) doesn't list any pairings for Willamette. It doesn't say much about it, really. So, I'm curious about the second piece.

They are not related, by anything accept for maybe trajectory in cyclic encounters with the asteroid belt. 

 

https://www.space.com/8522-ancient-40-pound-meteorite-pulled-ditch-oregon.html 

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13 hours ago, GeneralAnesthetic said:

A bit of quick looking that I should have done to begin with. The two meteorites are NOT related. Albeit I guess there is a super-uber slim chance they bounced from the same place. But the facts are,

 

Willamette meteorite is Iron

Morrow County meteorite is Stoney

 

Does not mean the impression near Fox Oregon isn't an impact crater. I need to stop off at the school to have the Math Prof. help me brush up on using Miller's indices to prove shocked features. I have other samples of glass and shocked material but it is from 130 miles to the east. Most of this research started because I could not fathom the quantity and state of the agatized, crystallized and opalized material. I've been all through Nevada, Utah and California to all kinds of boomtowns and gem sites. I've never seen anything like what I'm seeing. Does it mean anything? Probably not, but if I pretend I was never wrong it's a fantastic discovery none the less. lol

 

 

True, the relatedness (or lack thereof, in this case) says nothing about the possible crater. But, it does mean that they very likely (better than 99% chance, here) did not arrive in the same fall. I leave open the possibility, just because there are some meteorites with multiple lithologies known, although I don't offhand know of one that includes iron with ordinary chondrite.

 

Looking up Morrow County in MetBull, I see it has a weathering grade of W1. This means it's been exposed to the Earth environment for enough time to start to alter its surface composition, but not more than the surface (according to Wiki here). So Morrow County is a fairly recent fall, probably (my off-the-cuff guess, not a professional estimate) within the last 100-1000 years. If it was in a dry environment, the time estimate would be a lot higher. Given Oregon's environment, it may be a lot less.

 

Willamette doesn't look that freshly fallen. Take a look at the Wiki page I linked above; there's a photo of Willamette as an example of a heavily weathered large iron! I think we can safely say that these two did not fall at the same time, therefore they can't both be linked to the same impact site.

 

How big is the possible crater? Your photo doesn't have a scale, although the road in the image makes me think that it could be close to Canyon Diablo in size (~1 mile across). That's certainly within the size range for which iron meteorites can survive impact. A stony meteorite impact causing a crater of that scale would not leave any significant pieces. I know of one crater caused by a stony impactor (Carancas, Peru), and in that case, the crater is around 40 feet across, and the surviving meteorite pieces are all small. This article (LINK) gives a lot of good information about the Carancas crater, and describes the meteorite size range as between a couple of millimeters and "the size of a racquetball" (6 cm or 2.25 inches).

 

I don't think a stony meteorite the size of Morrow County would survive a cratering event. Keep in mind that meteorites fall frequently, and most don't leave craters. Craters only form when the meteorite explodes on impact, which only occurs when the initial body is large enough that atmospheric friction doesn't slow it down to ordinary free-fall velocities. Morrow County probably fell in the usual fashion, possible as part of a meteorite shower, but unrelated to either Willamette or the possible crater.

 

My other question is what is the distance between the possible crater and the Willamette site. For Willamette to be related, it would have to be either a piece that separated in flight and fell first (direction of flight: Willamette --> crater) or a massive piece of crater ejecta (direction of flight most likely (very) roughly: crater --> Willamette). In either case, there should be other meteorites that match Willamette scattered around the crater... Possibly weathered away, but a hunt with a good metal detector might yield interesting results.

 

Have fun with this. Personally, I think it's more likely that the possible crater is an old volcanic caldera or ordinary lakebed, but the research process is valuable in itself. I certainly don't want to put you off your quest!

 

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For the crater to really be the crater, the willamette meteorite must have fallen less than 13,000 years ago, or else it would have been washed further south by the flood that scientists currently believe placed it in the position which it was found in.

“...whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” ~ Charles Darwin

Happy hunting,

Mason

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22 minutes ago, WhodamanHD said:

For the crater to really be the crater, the willamette meteorite must have fallen less than 13,000 years ago, or else it would have been washed further south by the flood that scientists currently believe placed it in the position which it was found in.

 

Interesting. I hadn't heard that Willamette had been moved from its fall site.

 

A little Googling turns up this link on the history of Willamette: LINK. Some underhanded shenanigans there!

 

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38 minutes ago, Mediospirifer said:

How big is the possible crater? Your photo doesn't have a scale, although the road in the image makes me think that it could be close to Canyon Diablo in size (~1 mile across). That's certainly within the size range for which iron meteorites can survive impact. A stony meteorite impact causing a crater of that scale would not leave any significant pieces. I know of one crater caused by a stony impactor (Carancas, Peru), and in that case, the crater is around 40 feet across, and the surviving meteorite pieces are all small. This article (LINK) gives a lot of good information about the Carancas crater, and describes the meteorite size range as between a couple of millimeters and "the size of a racquetball" (6 cm or 2.25 inches).

The floor is ~3.5mi and crater rim is ~8mi. This is just incidental, kinda just tripped over. I have not put much into this angle, as it is not my true focus. It would be difficult to 'put me off' my quest as you put it. 

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8 minutes ago, Mediospirifer said:

 

Interesting. I hadn't heard that Willamette had been moved from its fall site.

 

A little Googling turns up this link on the history of Willamette: LINK. Some underhanded shenanigans there!

 

Good stuff there! I stuck with the wiki that said it was "originally found near the town of West Linn." As for the background, was pretty irrelevant since I haven't reached a correlation step regarding impact materials. That step was coming, but likely to involve a generality based one a time-frame of event. The fantastic part is that I have already brushed on the hint that there may be a relation to this event of 13,000 years ago. The way I am looking at it should provide explanations for a good many geological events spanning the globe. I am getting further and further every day. The only thing that is tough is developing my own methodology, since this is new to me. 

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4 minutes ago, GeneralAnesthetic said:

The floor is ~3.5mi and crater rim is ~8mi. This is just incidental, kinda just tripped over. I have not put much into this angle, as it is not my true focus. It would be difficult to 'put me off' my quest as you put it. 

 

That may be too big for an iron meteorite to survive the impact. The bigger the crater, the smaller the meteorites associated with it tends to be the case. I don't know what the upper limit on crater diameter would be for fragments to survive.

 

That doesn't mean anything with regards to whether it's a crater or not, of course. Only that it reduces the possibility of meteorites being associated with it.

 

Have fun exploring!

 

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39 minutes ago, WhodamanHD said:

For the crater to really be the crater, the willamette meteorite must have fallen less than 13,000 years ago, or else it would have been washed further south by the flood that scientists currently believe placed it in the position which it was found in.

Nope, this one was floated like Moses!

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On 8/12/2018 at 1:26 PM, Raggedy Man said:

Its nice to see a fellow high (dys) functional autistic fossil hunter with ADHD.:fistbump:

I’m also a high-function autistic with ADHD! Nice to meet you guys!

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I have noticed lately that a few of our members have mentioned that they are on the autism/ ADHD spectrum. We welcome the oportunity to serve a diverse audience. I always try to tailor my questions and answers to the specific person and to a lessor extent a worldwide audience. As autistic persons, what sort of challenges do you have while participating on the Fossil Forum? How can we improve our site or our interactions with you to accommodate you? I ask these questions because I come across autistic persons at outreach events for geology and paleontology. I try to figure out the best way to communicate my message to them. I also have a young close relative who is in the austic spectrum that I like to talk to about all the interesting subjects in this world.

 

I share some of your obsessions at least when it comes to paleontology.

 

John

 

My goal is to leave no stone or fossil unturned.   

See my Arizona Paleontology Guide    link  The best single resource for Arizona paleontology anywhere.       

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You people make my brain hurt! I can never let the people who know me find out about this group or their belief that I'm highly intelligent with be dashed to pieces...

 

I really don't care much about meteorites short of a passing curiosity and their association with astronomy (one of my other time wasting pseudo-obsessions) but this thread has been really interesting to read. That all being said, if I ever found one, it would wind up on my display cabinet.

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6 minutes ago, Ptychodus04 said:

You people make my brain hurt! I can never let the people who know me find out about this group or their belief that I'm highly intelligent with be dashed to pieces...

 

I really don't care much about meteorites short of a passing curiosity and their association with astronomy (one of my other time wasting pseudo-obsessions) but this thread has been really interesting to read. That all being said, if I ever found one, it would wind up on my display cabinet.

Man I'm glad I'm not the only one!

Everything is generated through your own will power ~ Ray Bradbury
 

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