teruakohatu 7 hours ago

As an amateur geologist I sometimes feel guilty that one day someone is going to find a really out-of-place rock to fossil in the back garden of any place I lived. Storing rocks in the back garden is the easiest way to store them, and during moves a few are usually lost.

I am in no way suggesting this is the case here, but it often comes up when somebody digs up an unusual out-of-place rock or mineral.

  • dmurray 4 hours ago

    Archaeologists already appreciate finding out-of-place items.

    "This rare find proves that third-millenium New Yorkers traded with the Chinese. It may have been used in a fertility ritual."

  • MomsAVoxell 6 hours ago

    Surely you can register your collection with the local institutions somehow, so that they’ll at least be aware of your travels?

    I’ve had the same thought with my own dispersal of extremely minor stuff I’ve found out in the wilderness - every time I brought home a nautilus shell from some other part of the state, or a skull of some critter I found interesting in my youth, I had the idea “maybe someone will think of this as a fossil at some point in the vast future, and wonder how it got there..”

    • teruakohatu 4 hours ago

      I appreciate your sentiment but fossils & interesting rocks are plentiful when you know where to look, nobody needs my home address changes logged in case a rock is left in a back garden.

      In any case a detailed analysis of the matrix (the rock surrounding a fossil or mineral) would give good indication of where it came from.

      I have submitted a couple of fossils to the govt. org responsible, and would do so in the future if I found anything noteworthy or an exceptional specimen.

    • m463 6 hours ago

      > “maybe someone will think of this as a fossil at some point in the vast future, and wonder how it got there..”

      ...especially with two lasers for eyes

      • MomsAVoxell 6 hours ago

        “I’ll be back” .. to dig up those possum skulls .. eventually ..

  • 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 6 hours ago

    Is "to fossil" a verb here?

    • teruakohatu 4 hours ago

      I think it can be a verb, but in this case it’s a typo “or”

benatkin 8 hours ago

Where's the Bluesky jaw?

  • Animats 6 hours ago

    Right. "Mastodon" should be lower case here.

  • debo_ 5 hours ago

    Or the Gojira jaw.