Angelo sent a new batch of pictures that he said were all of a "grayish purpleish piece" that I sent to him.
Quite frankly, I can't remember sending something like that to Angelo. But then, I send a lotta rocks to a lotta people. These photos are so cool that they deserve their own entry here.
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Update !!!! -- Angelo sent me pictures of the whole rock! My thinking about what the rock actually is has been revised. See my blog: Phunny Bone or Phoney Bone ?
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I think the first one is the most instructive. You may have heard of a dish called "Twice Baked Potatoes". Well, this rock is clearly a "twice petrified agate". (Update: And this blog contains "half baked conclusions!)
Contrary to popular belief, silicification (conversion of something to agate) doesn't have to take millions of years. Scientists have been able to make it happen in the laboratory in just a few years. In the wild, it would always take a lot longer than that, but sometimes not in the scale of millions of years.
This rock was silicified, cracked and fractured, and then silicified again. Check out the tiny little nodule in the upper left. It almost looks like a little banded agate nodule. It's even got a miniature quartz crystal center.
Awwww!!! It's a baby geode! (Update: Right. But a lot of dino bone contains baby geode cells. It's one of the things that makes it a unique rock.)
Just to the right and below, there's a cavity filled with tiny, tiny rock (Update: No. They're "bone") chips in a nice silica pudding.
I call this next one, "Dance Floor at the Rock Chip Disco".
Ever been to a disco where there were so many bodies that you could hardly move? Sometimes it's fun. Sometimes it's not. In this section, the tiny pieces of the original rock were all jammed together.
I call this next one the "Elvis Rock" because it's "All Shook Up". This part of the rock was silicified, fractured, silicified again and then fractured again. Check out the mini-nodule in the middle. It has two fracture lines running right through it. (Update: This part of the rock is even more fascinating. This now appears to be the dino bone cell walls that have broken free and have all been jammed together.)
Angelo should ask for a refund for sending him such a rock.
