Inclusions in paving slabs

[Yoda]

I have just gotten back from a two week holiday in Majorca, Spain.

We stayed in a self catering apartment. 

The area around the swimming pool was paved with what looks like sandstone slabs to me. There were shell fragments in all of them. Most were very indistinct, but there was a little detail in in some. 

No idea where these slabs would have been sourced from. 

 

Are these actually fossils??

 

 

 

[Jackson g]

Thats pretty cool, the first three pictures look like real marine life fossils to me. Although I'm not sure what your last photo pictured is.

[Rockwood]

Something looks wrong about these surfaces to me. They are too flat. Were they sawn this way I would expect more sectioning, and It just doesn't look like a bedding plain to me. I suppose they could be split somehow to look this way.

The shells could also be fossils that were incorporated into an artificial surface.

[JamieLynn]

this is what fossiliferous limestone typically looks like when sawn.....as Rockwood says....much flatter and with the shells very "cut" looking. We have lots of it here in Texas, they build whole buildings with it. 

[Mark Kmiecik]

9 hours ago, Rockwood said:

Something looks wrong about these surfaces to me. They are too flat. Were they sawn this way I would expect more sectioning, and It just doesn't look like a bedding plain to me. I suppose they could be split somehow to look this way.

The shells could also be fossils that were incorporated into an artificial surface.

Sometimes (actually, a lot of the time) in Europe you come across things that were built a thousand years ago with stone quarried nearby. If it has had time to weather it loses that smooth freshly-sawed surface. It is often saved when older structures are demolished and reused in new construction or it can be acid-etched so it's not slippery when wet as when used near a swimming pool.

[Rockwood]

4 hours ago, Mark Kmiecik said:

things that were built a thousand years ago

Please post a photo of a thousand year old rock saw. I'd be interested to see the technology. 

[Yoda]

9 hours ago, Mark Kmiecik said:

Sometimes (actually, a lot of the time) in Europe you come across things that were built a thousand years ago with stone quarried nearby. If it has had time to weather it loses that smooth freshly-sawed surface. It is often saved when older structures are demolished and reused in new construction or it can be acid-etched so it's not slippery when wet as when used near a swimming pool.

It was quite rough.

 

Is this more likely to be natural then? 

[Mark Kmiecik]

On 8/27/2019 at 8:39 PM, Rockwood said:

Please post a photo of a thousand year old rock saw. I'd be interested to see the technology. 

The Chinese did it like this 3 thousand years ago. I'm pretty sure the Europeans and Middle Easterners knew how to cut marble and other stone slabs with great accuracy as evidenced by buildings like the Parthenon. They were cutting blocks, slabs and cylinders at will by the 8th century. I can't provide a photograph of one since I am not aware of any that may have survived. Once a block is quarried it can be cut into slabs of the thickness desired quite easily. It is not rocket science. If you set up a jig, you get a cut as flat and smooth as calm water. The bow can be mechanically driven as well to reduce the chance of human error.

 

[Rockwood]

I guess in some ways a thousand years ago wasn't that long at all.

[Mark Kmiecik]

40 minutes ago, Rockwood said:

I guess in some ways a thousand years ago wasn't that long at all.

Yup, when you consider that the Colosseum in Rome was up and running by the year 100 and could accommodate more than 50,000 people. I've been there and it is indeed a great spectacle. When you see what is left of it, it is quite easy to imagine what it may have been in its heyday. Makes many of modern man's achievements seem pitiful by comparison.