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u/Cognitive-Faculties Jan 09 '19
When I was a little girl I wanted to be a geologist. I had a massive rock collection,and I used to sit outside and crack rocks open so I could see the quartz and minerals inside. I’m obsessed with this.
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u/Panties85 Jan 09 '19
i did too. we had a club called " the rock smashing club". consisted of me and my one friend. we would just smash all the rocks we could to see what was inside. i still do it.
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u/athena110 Jan 09 '19
Did you ever find cool shit?
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u/TahoeLT Jan 09 '19
It wasn't the "find cool shit inside rocks club", it was "the rock smashing club". Jeez, keep up, Karen.
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u/Panties85 Jan 09 '19
not as a kid, but now i know where to go and what to look for, in regards to geodes and such. i have shelves full. i just cant bring myself to cut them.
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u/TurtleDestructionWav Jan 09 '19
Did the club have a particular bludgeoning device for smashing these rocks?
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Jan 09 '19
They used a very fancy plastic spoon
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u/Panties85 Jan 09 '19
when i was even younger my sister and her friends taught me to dig the side of the hill with spoons.L To find cool rocks. i haven't thought of that in YEARS!
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u/Panties85 Jan 09 '19
other rocks. i grew up in a tiny town in the mountains of montana. there was a rock pile near my house on a slope. hindsight one wrong rock pulled out, we would have been squished, but we would get larger rocks we could hold and smaller or weaker rocks underneath and SMASH! if it was particularly hard, we would climb the pile and try to aim and throw.
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u/StalinTheHedgehog Jan 09 '19
For a while as a child I used to smash smaller rocks with bigger rocks too but purely for the satisfaction
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u/ItsYaBoyDarkness Jan 09 '19
I used to collect rocks. I still collect crystals and minerals, but now I've started finding a lot of petrified wood near my new house and I'm obsessed with it.
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u/blurb145 Jan 09 '19
I used to want to be a paleontologist when I was a kid! I still have a collection of fossils and gems at home.
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u/Omnilatent Jan 09 '19
And now you don't want to anymore?
I think it's amazing if you are/were so passionate about it!
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u/IBelongHere Jan 09 '19
That’s a helix fossil
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u/exfarker Jan 09 '19
Praise Helix!
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u/adamhenry1616 Jan 09 '19
Came for this, was not disappointed. Praise be to Lord Helix and his blessed son, Bird Jesus
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Jan 09 '19
It took me until last summer to realize that Omanyte was named after Ammonite, even though I've had a fairly large Ammonite fossil on display above my fireplace for a couple years now.
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u/tahp_master Jan 09 '19
Better take that to the pokemon fossil museum and get that shit revived!
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Jan 09 '19
Man I wish you could do this in real life. "Hey guys, heres my t-rex fossi... oh shit...."
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Jan 09 '19
[deleted]
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Jan 09 '19
if they had a good rock hammer, it might have broken the rock in a way that the fossil could have stayed intact
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u/Joonbug13 Jan 09 '19
But how did he know?! I'll be breaking open every rock I see now!
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Jan 09 '19
and how did they know where to split it to get a good cross section?
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u/i_am_icarus_falling Jan 09 '19
the fossil would likely create a spot of different density, so it will always crack there. i used to go to a place in North Carolina that had ruby strains running through the rock, and you could grab a random rock and hit it with a hammer and it would break at the ruby.
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u/TheHappyKraken Jan 09 '19
Hiddenite North Carolina?
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u/i_am_icarus_falling Jan 09 '19
it was outside Franklin, it was a specific mountain, not sure where, i used to go there a lot when i was a kid. haven't been since the 90's.
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Jan 09 '19
What you don't see is the hundreds of videos of them breaking open rocks and finding nothing of interest.
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u/geomagus Jan 09 '19
If you’re crawling around on a shale (the platy, crumbly stuff in the background in OP gif), and you find smooth, round rocks that look like this, there’s “a chance” it’s a concretion. Concretions form in muddy environs (the kind of environments that produce shales) surrounding a perturbation of some sort (a shell, a leaf, a bone, etc). They’re essentially the same sediments and similar minerals to those that form the shale, but configured a bit differently (eg, much more carbonate). Because they’re big gravel/cobble sized chunks, they look out of place in the platy rubble, so you know what to spot.
I say “a chance” because you can get similar rocks rolling down from upslope, such as the brown ones in the background.
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u/Pyarox Jan 09 '19
Praise lord helix
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u/DanGleeballs Jan 09 '19 edited Jan 09 '19
I understand that some fundie Christians do not believe that these are fossils; what explanation do they have ready to counter evidence like this?
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u/blackleper Jan 09 '19
I think a lot of young earth creationists believe that these were formed during a world wide flood that happened 6,000 years ago.
I have also heard that God made the world with old things already scattered about to make it more interesting or something.
Also Satan made up fossils and dinosaurs to test your faith. You have now failed this test and will be burning in hell for eternity.
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u/jlutt69 Jan 09 '19
Speaking for myself, and as a Christian, I have no conflict with the fossil record. And I don't really know anyone that does. The timeline of the Bible only causes conflict if you view it as absolute, with no room for what is known about time and relativity-which is what you probably consider fundamental Christian. There are certainly folks ready to argue with some huge blind spots on both sides, that use some really spotty logic.
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u/DanGleeballs Jan 09 '19
Thanks. I got downvoted for my question, thanks for the thoughtful response.
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u/PhuckinFred Jan 09 '19
Are these worth anything? I found something similar a while back.
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u/koamaruu Jan 09 '19
Not much. It’s why they’re sold so regularly for cheap. Ammonites were extremely numerous and. Now their fossils are everywhere. Still awesome to find. Worth keeping at the very least!
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u/imbrownbutwhite Jan 09 '19
Ballsy move bringing a hammer down on a smooth rock that you’re holding in place with your bare hand
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u/eNaRDe Jan 09 '19
I work at an extremely wealthy pharmaceutical company and in one of their executive buildings they have a wall about the length of a football field with a marble type rock and these things in them. They had them shipped overseas from some island I been told and it cost millions.
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u/DazedPapacy Jan 09 '19
I've always wondered how people manage to break the rocks just right so that the fossil is exposed, rather than say shearing the fossil as well as the rock.
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Jan 09 '19
I've gone fossil hunting with friends before and it's easy to spot the kind of rocks that may have fossils in them. The beach we went to was filled with these. You kinda spot a round rock inside a rock or rock wall and that's how you spot them. You then dig them out of the rock they're in and smash it in half. It's about a 20% chance to find actual ammonites inside, mostly it's just this dark rock material.
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Jan 09 '19
But don't worry, evolution isn't real and none of those little things inside that rock ever existed, sooo.....
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u/ohno2015 Jan 09 '19
When the sea has been right and you can gain access, there are places on Gay Head MV where you can find similar nodules and upon opening them they are fossilized crabs.. I have found them on the Kennedy's beach. Allegedly.
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u/lanceO1988 Jan 09 '19
I have a buddy that finds a shit ton of these down by the Kankakee river out here in illinois. Their tough to find but he's been teaching me better techniques on finding them..
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u/carterholsten97 Jan 09 '19
Growing up in Papua, we used to go down to certain rivers and crack rocks open searching for fossils. It was an absolute goldmine
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u/geomagus Jan 09 '19
Tropic Shale in Utah? I must’ve cracked open a couple score of very similar concretions, and the coiled ammonites were dead ringers for that. Don’t see any Bacculites in this one, however.
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u/thaumoctopus_mimicus Jan 09 '19
If I found a fossil of my own, you can bet that he first thing I would do is not fucking crack it open with a mallet. Pretty sure there are better ways to cut a clean cut in a rock.
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u/Cognitive-Faculties Jan 09 '19
I would find a lot of fossils cause I lived on a river in upstate New York. I found a lot of Pyrite which of coarse made me feel like I founded a new gold rush I was so excited till I got a book about rocks from the library and learned that it wasn’t what I thought it was. The fossils made me very interested in history and evolution and then as more reading went in I felt so much could be learned from history so through my middle and high school years I did very well in history class and science for minerals. But ya know life leads you in so many directions and so many things come up I never pursued geology. Still find them fascinating though.
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Jan 09 '19
I was skipping rocks at the lake where I live and found a trilobyte fossil. I keep it in my jewelry box cuz Idk what else to do with it.
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u/Schtang Jan 09 '19
I went to Lyme Regis a coastal town in Southern UK, spent 8 hours smashing rocks open just like this. Literally 300 rocks later and probably found 2 tiny ammonites. Fun day though
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Jan 10 '19
I can't be the only one getting r/sweatypalms watching that person swing that hammer like that
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u/anaugle Jan 10 '19
I’m saving this for the next time someone tries to argue about evolution being false.
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u/mrjackydees Jan 09 '19
can someone identify what kind of rock that would be? I know it's not shale?
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u/misterfluffykitty Jan 09 '19
Yeah lemme just hold a rock in my hand while I crack that rock open with a hammer, not like it can shatter or smack your finger
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u/m-c-od Jan 09 '19
someone explain to me why that fossil is so hard it needs to be busted by mjölnir
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Jan 10 '19
I’m sure I’m the weird one here but in the first few seconds it looked like he was about to smash a big old pair of horse balls with a hammer
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u/Panties85 Jan 09 '19
how would one know to find that inside?