The Stones of Marrakech and Other Lies

One of the rocks in my dad’s collection is a popular fossil sold to tourists … and available in quantity in commercial rock shows like Tucson and Quartzite. If you go to those shows, you’ve probably seen them. Although it was in my dad’s collection, I question whether he actually bought or traded for it. He normally didn’t go for this type of thing. My dad had a lot of friends and they would give each other things.

To give you a better idea about this rock (I'm offering it as a "two fer" deal through the store.) -- Here's a video I made.

The great Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay about the manufacture of fossils – and the damage to our understanding of the natural history of the Earth – that became the main title of one of his books:

The lying Stones of Marrakech

This specimen might be called a “little black lie” because it’s fairly easy to see that the Devonian Nautiloids – the actual North Africa fossils seen in this rock – were found separately, polished, and then simply glued onto a prepared surface of another rock. The argument could be made that there was never an attempt to deceive. And there is skill and craftsmanship that went into manufacturing it.

That isn’t the case with many other “fossils” – including a lot that are also manufactured in North Africa for the tourists. Gould writes that some of them are good enough to fool even experts until they’re examined closely. Piltdown Man, a “fossil” “found” in England in 1912 wasn’t exposed until 1953 after the owner died and scientists were finally able to examine it.

Here’s my story about fake fossils.

When I was young and foolish* my wife and I went on a ski vacation in the Canadian Rockies. You may know that some of the best fossil country anywhere is just east of there. A jewelry shop had some ammonite bolo ties for sale that just knocked my eyes out. We were there for most of a week and I visited that shop every day. I questioned the owner carefully about the bolo ties. English clearly wasn’t his first language but what I could get from him was, “Of course the fossils are genuine!” On the last day we were there, I caved in and spent more money than I should have to buy one.

For well over a decade, it was my favorite bolo tie. When my wife and I went on a cruise, I took it with me to wear. We were leaning over the rail on the top deck of the cruise ship when to my horror, it fell out of the metal mounting and fell perhaps a hundred feet to the concrete below on the pier. I watched it bounce. I rushed down stairs to retrieve it but I was sure that it had shattered into pieces.

No … It was in pretty good condition! But now that I could see the back, it was quite clear that this was no fossil. The back was solid (and evidently quite durable) black plastic. For over a decade, it had fooled me! If I look at it carefully now, I can see a few places where the silver paint is wearing away.

My only excuse is that I was a computer programmer, not a rockhound. My dad was a great rockhound. Still, I can’t really complain. It’s still a favorite bolo tie. I just have a different story to tell about it now. The moral of the story is that now, more than ever, “Caveat Emptor” – “Let the buyer beware!”

Artificial “hematite” is a big import these days. I’ve seen a lot of it for sale advertised as genuine hematite. My friend Angelo tipped me off to the name “hematine” that more honest dealers use. I learned that “hematine” isn’t even the same kind of rock. To quote the geology website, Mindat.org, “The name 'hematite' is quite misleading, as this is NOT a natural stone.” It’s actually ”ceramic barium-strontium ferrite”.

The real driver of fake stones is price. And turquoise is king of that hill. Very little natural turquoise can be found today and the price has just gone into outer space. With turquoise, you probably should assume that it isn’t natural. You should ask, “What kind of fake is this?” You have “turquoise” that is actually dyed Howlite. There is stabilized, reconstituted, resin, and reconstructed turquoise. Some is inferior turquoise that is ground to a powder and then remade into a block. It can be so convincing that you need lab equipment to tell the difference.

With art, like “old master” paintings, experts often debate for many decades about whether a piece is “authentic” or “fake”. In Utah, one of the most spectacular murder trials we’ve ever had involved a counterfeiter who created “historical” documents. They fooled everybody for years. He murdered a couple of people to keep his secret from coming out.

The best protection against fakes is in one word: “Provenance”: “The chronology of the ownership, custody or location of an object.”

When my dad was in his rockhounding prime, this was never a problem. My dad knew every rockhound in the county. He knew where they rockhounded and what rocks they found. They all talked about it at rock club meetings and on trips into the desert together. But today, it is a problem. You don’t know me. I don’t know you. And many, many tons of rocks are bought and sold at Tucson and Quartzite … much of it imported from somewhere far away.

I don’t know what the solution is. I don’t even know if there is one. If you know, leave a comment let the rest of us in on it.

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* I’m old and still foolish now. The Canadian humorist Red Green once pointed out that one of the very few good things about getting old is that old people can get away with stuff that would get a younger person tossed out on his ear.