Novaculite found offshore....comments? suggestions?

[ZuluDiver]

We located some interesting ledges while running side scan sonar off the coast of North Carolina. One of our divers brought up a "rock" that was about 3 inches thick at one end and tapered off to about an inch. It was about 14 inches long and 10 inches wide. It was examined by 2 different college's Geologists and determined to be an extremely high grade Novaculite.

We have since gone back and collected many more samples and it is very odd all the different shapes and sizes we have found. From large "sheets" to shapes that look like they have been poured into molds.

I'm very curious to know what we have and I am looking for comments.

There is another angle on this in that most archeologists believe that the ancient North American Indians travelled from the Arkansas area to trade their "razor rock" on the East Coast because there have been many finds of tools and arrowheads made of Novaculite. Now it looks as if there actually was Novaculite on the East Coast and the depth we are finding this in was exposed in that time period (between 6000-10000 years ago).


Anyone?

[ZuluDiver]

sorry about the giant images. I thought they were the right size. I will try to re-post them tomorrow resized

[joshuaream]

It's certainly chert, but aside from the color it doesn't particularly look like Novaculite. Those nodules have erroded out of a chalk bed somewhere, and novaculite is found in layers sandwiched between different types of rock (not chalk.)