geology question

[johnco]

Okay.. what exactly is this pictured below? digging a pool, I hit this pocket of black sand/small round pieces of stone and hundreds/thousands of these marble sized stones. the pocket was about 1 1/2-2 ft dia. and started about the middle of the 16 ft wide hole and continued under the side. this was about 6 ft deep. the mix has a petroleum smell to it. digging holes for over 20 years, this is the first I've seen this. I do find clay marble sized objects in the right type of sandy clay, but these are stone/rock. Now this is deep in the swamp buried in blackjack slimy mud. there are no rocks, no stones... nothing but mud in this part of the world. the only rocks you'll find were trucked or barged in.. nothing naturally occuring, except the ones in my head of course. I saved some samples and am curious to find exactly what this is.

[RoninLB]

i punched google w/ "geology research" and received plenty of hits.

[johnco]

thought someone else might find it interesting also.

[dhoward]

Ancient Mayan marble arena.
Expect your dig site to be roped off soon...

[johnco]

that's why you re-bury the skeletons from the slave graveyard somewhere else before anyone finds out

[LeeH]

Concretions?
http://www.royalsaskmuseum.ca/research/faqs/es_4.shtml
http://unews.utah.edu/p/?r=030306-3

[ckissick]

I'm a geologist, but in California, and have no knowledge of your local geology. Are they magnetic? Could they be ball bearings? Who knows, there might have been a ball bearing factory nearby, and they dumped bad bearings in a pit. I've come across stranger things.

If natural, they are some sort of concretion, perhaps calcite. See if they fizz slightly in lemon juice.

[masraum]

Very cool find. Thanks for the post.

[johnco]

not ball bearings. this is found 6 ft down on a natural ridge of land a few feet above river level surrounded by swamp. this was just a pocket of this oily mess under the blackjack/swamp mud about the same level I started hitting roots from the cypress trees that were removed to build the subdivision 30-40+ years ago. too deep to have been placed there by someone and not landfill material. I have found many things buried over the years, but this is the first time I've seen this. I asked another contractor that's excavated all over the area for twice as long as I have and he's never seen anything like this either. not like I'll lose sleep over it as the pool is already in the ground, but I am curious. I really thought I had found miniballs from the Civil War when I first saw them. here's a close-up of some.

[johnco]

tried breaking one apart with a pair of pliers to look inside. no luck. I'll crush one later with a hammer. To find rock in this area, I'm sure you would have to go down hundreds of feet thru the muck. 40 ft pilings hammer down in just a few minutes. it's probably something deposited by the river eons ago, but quite unusual. it smells something like charcol lighter fluid and diesel.

[slodave]

Originally Posted by johnco

not ball bearings. this is found 6 ft down on a natural ridge of land a few feet above river level surrounded by swamp. this was just a pocket of this oily mess under the blackjack/swamp mud about the same level I started hitting roots from the cypress trees that were removed to build the subdivision 30-40+ years ago. too deep to have been placed there by someone and not landfill material. I have found many things buried over the years, but this is the first time I've seen this. I asked another contractor that's excavated all over the area for twice as long as I have and he's never seen anything like this either. not like I'll lose sleep over it as the pool is already in the ground, but I am curious. I really thought I had found miniballs from the Civil War when I first saw them. here's a close-up of some.

Looks radioactive to me

[johnco]

tastes like chicken, only more crunchy

[tabs]

Your onto the Treasure of Jean Lafete.

[johnco]

maybe you're right Tabs. this might be his famous collection of minature cannon balls

[johnco]

update on my unknown objects. local war of northern aggression buff said that the area I'm working in was a staging ground for some battles. since the boys were running out of lead, someone came up with an idea for rounding off these stones to use as bullets. the black BB sized oily substance the stones were found in was packing to keep the "bullets" moist and keep them from fracturing. the contractor that dredged the area found wagon wheels and other artifacts in the same general area.. so if this is true.. I found and re buried bucket loads of these things and only kept a couple liter bottles of them. might have to dig up the same spot and collect some more. anyone want a few? I have no idea if this story is factual, but this was my first guess of what these things were and have heard this from a few people now.

[masraum]

This is really quite neat. Thanks for the info.

[pwd72s]

Ditto...I love this stuff.

[rattlsnak]

ever heard of Poltergeist??

[M.D. Holloway]

John,
Send me some and I will have our lab run some tests to determine what you have. I bet what your looking at are the remaiklns of a oil well site or worse - illegal dumping. If uoi want to know what it is, send me an e-mail and I will send you a shipping addresss.

(reminds of a Star Trek episode where the round rocks turned out to be eggs!)

[masraum]

Originally Posted by LubeMaster77

John,
Send me some and I will have our lab run some tests to determine what you have. I bet what your looking at are the remaiklns of a oil well site or worse - illegal dumping. If uoi want to know what it is, send me an e-mail and I will send you a shipping addresss.

(reminds of a Star Trek episode where the round rocks turned out to be eggs!)

He's determined that the stones are definitely stone, home-made, civil war era "bullets". But it would be interesting to know what the smell is from. It definitely smells oily or of kerosene or something like that.