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Post by rockpickerforever on Dec 13, 2020 8:30:19 GMT -5
More textured mud balls Dry
Wet. These soak up water like a sponge.  Dry.
 Wet.
 Strange one. Just mud, not a fossil. Dry.
 Wet.
 All are soft and easily scratched. |
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Post by jasoninsd on Dec 13, 2020 11:04:25 GMT -5
More textured mud balls Dry
Wet. These soak up water like a sponge. Dry.
Wet.
Strange one. Just mud, not a fossil. Dry.
Wet.
All are soft and easily scratched. Thank you VERY much for posting these! You pretty much had me convinced mine was a mudball as well...however... There's a noticeable difference between mine and what you posted. The textures on yours are on the outside of the mudball. The "textured" area on mine is on the interior and runs through the entire interior of the piece...and the more I look at that textured part, it almost looks agotized when I look at it from certain angles. The reason I thought this might be bone of some sort, is the "interior textured" area would seem like the "marrow" section of the bone from a visual and my own "logical" way of looking at it... I'll see if I can get a pic showing the textured are going all the way through... I don't have a kit for checking the actual mohs of anything...but the exterior is softer than that textured area in the middle... |
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Post by jasoninsd on Dec 13, 2020 11:07:34 GMT -5
Here's a pic showing the textured area going all the way through the interior.  |
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Post by rockpickerforever on Dec 13, 2020 11:15:13 GMT -5
So, you think you may have a fossil inside a textured muball? May be!
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Post by greig on Dec 13, 2020 11:15:32 GMT -5
Sabre tooth turtles back then?
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Post by jasoninsd on Dec 13, 2020 11:26:12 GMT -5
So, you think you may have a fossil inside a textured muball? May be! Do any of the mudballs you've found have this type of texturing and/or different materal on the interior versus what's on the exterior? On mine, it's definitely not the same material as on the exterior... I'm definitely not trying to say this is a fossil, as I'm the WORST for identifying pretty much everything! LOL Sabre tooth turtles back then?  My wife keeps saying it looks like the cross-section of an elephant trunk...so I'm getting this from all angles! LOL |
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RWA3006
Cave Dweller 
Member since March 2009
Posts: 4,666 
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Post by RWA3006 on Dec 13, 2020 19:17:16 GMT -5
Here's a pic showing the textured area going all the way through the interior. OK, this photo angle changes everything and now I know for sure that it's a fossilized section of a gravity compensator organ from an ancient alien. Serious. It's so obvious now. Yep. |
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agatemaggot
Cave Dweller
Member since August 2006
Posts: 2,195
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Post by agatemaggot on Dec 13, 2020 20:20:44 GMT -5
Don't have a clue as to what that is but it sure looks like reptile skin to me !
If I found a piece of that I think I would give it a home on my mantle and tell anyone that ask that it was fossilized Dino skin !
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Post by jasoninsd on Dec 13, 2020 21:16:36 GMT -5
Here's a pic showing the textured area going all the way through the interior. OK, this photo angle changes everything and now I know for sure that it's a fossilized section of a gravity compensator organ from an ancient alien. Serious. It's so obvious now. Yep. It's about time you were able to clear this whole thing up! LOL Don't have a clue as to what that is but it sure looks like reptile skin to me ! If I found a piece of that I think I would give it a home on my mantle and tell anyone that ask that it was fossilized Dino skin ! When I found it, my very first thought was that I was going to cut it into slabs...and now I don't want to touch it with a saw...no matter what it turns out to be.  |
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Post by hummingbirdstones on Dec 13, 2020 21:24:50 GMT -5
jasoninsd you should take that to the Museum of Geology and see what they have to say.
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Post by jasoninsd on Dec 13, 2020 21:32:50 GMT -5
jasoninsd you should take that to the Museum of Geology and see what they have to say. Great suggestion. I've been considering doing exactly that!  My dad used to work at the School of Mines and Technology here in Rapid City until he retired. He worked in the mechanical engineering department. I think I might make a trip down there with him and have the geology department there check it out... |
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Post by rockpickerforever on Dec 13, 2020 22:12:03 GMT -5
Here's a pic showing the textured area going all the way through the interior. Somewhere, Jason, you had asked if we ever find them with things inside? How about this?
From Ocotillo Wells. A bone in concretion/mudball, whatever you want to call it. This is surrounded with much coarser sand than the finer mud/silt sized particles in the previous mudstones.
This is a vertebrae from an extinct camel.
It was positively IDed, and prepped, by a friend of ours, "Fritz" Robert Sullivan, that prepared fossils for the San Diego Natural History Museum. We showed it to him, and he offered to prep it for us. We took him up on that! He did it at the museum.
Now throw a monkey wrench into the deal. Fritz had prostate cancer that went into his bones. He actually passed away with the bone in his possession. We had to contact the museum, tell them the story, and ask for it back.
They complied, but we could tell they would have liked to have kept it.
We keep it displayed on a machine disk of aluminum, with a plexiglass dome over it to keep the dust off.
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Post by jasoninsd on Dec 13, 2020 22:20:21 GMT -5
rockpickerforever - Oh my gosh those are some amazing "little" surprises! How flipping amazing! Sorry to hear your friend passed away, and from the most ironic thing possible...bone cancer! I'm glad the issue with the museum didn't turn into a bigger nightmare than it was, and you were able to get that back! Those specimens are SO amazing!
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Post by greig on Dec 14, 2020 8:35:39 GMT -5
Add some toes to it and it looks like the footprint of a samsquinch (big harry bastard). ;-)
It would be cool if it is something more than a mud-ball. I love mysteries.
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Post by jasoninsd on Dec 14, 2020 8:49:53 GMT -5
Add some toes to it and it looks like the footprint of a samsquinch (big harry bastard). ;-) It would be cool if it is something more than a mud-ball. I love mysteries. I'm telling you, you and my wife are teaming up! LOL As this came out of the river, there's some very fine dried up moss, or some kind of lichen that is stuck in a couple of the cracks...and I mean really fine...to the point it gives off the appearance of looking like wadded up hair. Despite my protestations that it is not, my wife keeps saying "Well, there's hair in there so it had to have come from an animal!"  |
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Post by fernwood on Dec 14, 2020 8:55:24 GMT -5
Are you going to let your wife know that it is impossible for hair to survive the petrification process?
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Post by jasoninsd on Dec 14, 2020 9:01:55 GMT -5
Are you going to let your wife know that it is impossible for hair to survive the petrification process? I did. I think she knows...but I think she relishes in giving me as much coprolite as I dish out to her at times...if you know what I mean. At first I thought she was serious... |
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Post by fernwood on Dec 14, 2020 9:08:35 GMT -5
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Post by greig on Dec 14, 2020 11:17:54 GMT -5
Are you going to let your wife know that it is impossible for hair to survive the petrification process? I did. I think she knows...but I think she relishes in giving me as much coprolite as I dish out to her at times...if you know what I mean. At first I thought she was serious... Only a joke a rockhound would understand. However, my better half likes to give it to me fresh. |
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kyoti
has rocks in the head
Member since June 2020
Posts: 542
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Post by kyoti on Dec 24, 2020 18:21:56 GMT -5
Cool looking rock. I found a couple down here that had a texture very similar. I said oh my gosh oh my gosh dinosaur skin woot woot.. but no it wasn't for me. 😛😛 They were really cool on the inside though. One of them was tan with black hematite looking balls in it and the other one has little bubbles of quartz in it. I'll take a picture of them tomorrow when there's daylight.
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My dad used to work at the School of Mines and Technology here in Rapid City until he retired. He worked in the mechanical engineering department. I think I might make a trip down there with him and have the geology department there check it out...
