Derk
Jr. Member
- Sep 30, 2018
- 43
- 43
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
I am really scratching my head on this one, and would greatly appreciate any wisdom on ANY aspect of this by any Sages of any the Sciences that wouldn't mind imparting onto my barely hobbyist's level of understanding of anything relating to "Rocks."
I'll try to keep this fairly brief, but I want to give all the information I can think of that might help the more knowledgable among us more readily solve the handful of mysteries this created for me. I won't list any here as the title pretty much says it all.
I found this kinda "fin shaped"(with some flat surfaces too) piece of limestone while artifact hunting a local field here in Howard County, Indiana. I only carried it home because I mistakenly thought it might have been worked into some ancient tool of some kind, based on it shape. After cleaning it up, I could see a couple possibly metallic inclusions and wanted to know how large and of what they were so I started rubbing away at the soft limestone around those "metal" bits with a stiff bristle brush.
Progress was fairly steady that way, but I thought I would speed the process up, and at the same time, would be able to rule out typical metals if the inclusions dissolve away with the limestone in a strong acid solution. So I prepared an acid bath and introduced the whole stone, allowing it to soak for a few hours. After a while I could see that it was a fossil's positioning inside the rock that gave it the unique, man-made looking shape, and it was not a stone tool of any kind. So I returned it to the acid bath to see how much more of the fossil(s) I could expose.
When I checked on it later is when I was able to see that there was a lot more of the "metallic" bits exposed, some looking very much like teeth or spikes of some kind, and also visible then was a fairly large(by Indiana fossil standards at least)partially intact, if not fully complete, marine fossil specimen of some kind. There were also various impressions made visible on the parts of the surface that looked like fibers in some areas, and there were spots that looked like scales and imprints looking like modern fish fins to my untrained eyes. The most noticeable features that became exposed in the acid bath would probably have to be the many pockets of, not impressions of, but clusters of delicate but thick fibrous bristles were becoming exposed and would fall away after continued contact time with the acid solution, which eventually prompted me to remove the sample from solution, then rinse and neutralize any residual to preserve what may still be left within the limestone matrix(most likely for later destruction by some other means) for now.
But in the time leading up to that, during my subsequent checkups, I started to notice an increasing amount of debris particles of various size, shape, and structure, floating around in, and on top of the solution. A lot of which looked consistent with being remnants from some of the fibrous and scaley-looking fin-like surfaces that had been exposed.
At some point, I decided to collect a couple samples of this debris so I could see what they looked like under magnification, and take some photos and/or video if interesting. And that is what leads up to here.
I have selected several high-res photos, mostly under magnifications of either roughly 20x or close to 45x both alternately, as well as standard macro-mode pictures and some in standard field format. They will be posted just below the linked video I made, posted right below here. It shows the compiled video clips that I recorded under magnification. First showing clips of the fleshy tentacle bits, then are clips of the magnified portions of the source limestone inclusions prior to most of the acid treatments. Altogether the video is about 9 minutes long, and I apologize for not editing it down to a shorter length but apart from no more than 2 or 3 focusing hiccups, the clips give a good of data and depth, and are arguably worth the time to watch. I leave that up to your discretion.
If you can tell me what th main fossil is, whether there's multiple fossils, what are the squishy bits, and how in the world did they come from fossils in limestone, please do, as I can assure you that I am largely lacking in my level of education on geological sciencerety...
Thank you
I'll try to keep this fairly brief, but I want to give all the information I can think of that might help the more knowledgable among us more readily solve the handful of mysteries this created for me. I won't list any here as the title pretty much says it all.
I found this kinda "fin shaped"(with some flat surfaces too) piece of limestone while artifact hunting a local field here in Howard County, Indiana. I only carried it home because I mistakenly thought it might have been worked into some ancient tool of some kind, based on it shape. After cleaning it up, I could see a couple possibly metallic inclusions and wanted to know how large and of what they were so I started rubbing away at the soft limestone around those "metal" bits with a stiff bristle brush.
Progress was fairly steady that way, but I thought I would speed the process up, and at the same time, would be able to rule out typical metals if the inclusions dissolve away with the limestone in a strong acid solution. So I prepared an acid bath and introduced the whole stone, allowing it to soak for a few hours. After a while I could see that it was a fossil's positioning inside the rock that gave it the unique, man-made looking shape, and it was not a stone tool of any kind. So I returned it to the acid bath to see how much more of the fossil(s) I could expose.
When I checked on it later is when I was able to see that there was a lot more of the "metallic" bits exposed, some looking very much like teeth or spikes of some kind, and also visible then was a fairly large(by Indiana fossil standards at least)partially intact, if not fully complete, marine fossil specimen of some kind. There were also various impressions made visible on the parts of the surface that looked like fibers in some areas, and there were spots that looked like scales and imprints looking like modern fish fins to my untrained eyes. The most noticeable features that became exposed in the acid bath would probably have to be the many pockets of, not impressions of, but clusters of delicate but thick fibrous bristles were becoming exposed and would fall away after continued contact time with the acid solution, which eventually prompted me to remove the sample from solution, then rinse and neutralize any residual to preserve what may still be left within the limestone matrix(most likely for later destruction by some other means) for now.
But in the time leading up to that, during my subsequent checkups, I started to notice an increasing amount of debris particles of various size, shape, and structure, floating around in, and on top of the solution. A lot of which looked consistent with being remnants from some of the fibrous and scaley-looking fin-like surfaces that had been exposed.
At some point, I decided to collect a couple samples of this debris so I could see what they looked like under magnification, and take some photos and/or video if interesting. And that is what leads up to here.
I have selected several high-res photos, mostly under magnifications of either roughly 20x or close to 45x both alternately, as well as standard macro-mode pictures and some in standard field format. They will be posted just below the linked video I made, posted right below here. It shows the compiled video clips that I recorded under magnification. First showing clips of the fleshy tentacle bits, then are clips of the magnified portions of the source limestone inclusions prior to most of the acid treatments. Altogether the video is about 9 minutes long, and I apologize for not editing it down to a shorter length but apart from no more than 2 or 3 focusing hiccups, the clips give a good of data and depth, and are arguably worth the time to watch. I leave that up to your discretion.
If you can tell me what th main fossil is, whether there's multiple fossils, what are the squishy bits, and how in the world did they come from fossils in limestone, please do, as I can assure you that I am largely lacking in my level of education on geological sciencerety...
Thank you
