#Fossil question
While nosing around the math section of this forum, I noticed the heavy volume
of messages about fossils, and although it may be slightly absurd, I'd like to
try to take advantage of your collective expertise by posing a question that
probably cannot be answered by modem.
On a whim, I bought a fossil for my girlfriend. I saw it in a store; it was
pretty; it cost only nine bucks. When I got home, however, it occurred to me
that it might be fake, and it's been sitting here on my desk ever since while I
wonder whether to gift wrap it or return it.
What I propose to do, as silly as it may be, is describe the thing as best I
can in the hopes that someone can tell me whether it's real.
The object is labeled, "Green River, WY, Eocene, 50+ million years old." It's a
flat block about 7 x 3 x 1/2 inch in size, shaped much like a thick rectangular
tile, of a stony material that looks very much like plaster, except that it's
slightly grayer or browner in color and has small flecks of a gray substance in
it (which may only be dirt in the pores). The edges (1/2" dimension) were cut
with a saw, and are smooth, and have few flecks; the top and bottom is rough
and porous, as if the thing was split, not sawed, to form its large faces.
Looking at any edge from the side, a narrow stripe of yellow-brown is visible
all the way around, so the whole thing gives the effect of a peanut butter
sandwich on crustless white bread that has been pressed under a weight and
squashed until the peanut butter is visible only as a thin brown line around
the edges.
The fossil, if that is what it is, is a four inch fish on the top flat surface.
It's yellow-brown, like the stripe, whereas the substrate is off white. It
consists mostly of bones, including part of the spine and some fine bones that
are atached more or less perpendicularly to the spine, but there are also
brownish-yellow stains on the substrate where the head, tail, and part of the
body were. These stains look to me more like organic matter that leached from
the decomposing fish into the substrate than minerals that accumulated in the
tissues of the fish. There are also some "fossilized" yellow-brown bits along
the perimeter of what I take to have been the most ventral surface of the fish
before it was squashed into a pancake, as though it had scaly armor along its
belly. These plates or bits are almost as big as the vertebrae. The two biggest
glops of fossilized stuff are at the forward end of the creature's snout. In
addition to the brown/yellow bits of bone and other material, and the
stain-like leaching, there is also an impression, a sort of negative body cast,
of the tail and part of the head. The yellow-brown fossilized bits (other than
the stain) are chunks of material, and they protrude upward from the substrate.
The reasons for my doubts about the thing's authenticity are (1) the bones
appear to be of an entirely different material from the substrate, (2) the
yellow-brown material does not look particularly like a mineral, (3) I think I
might be able to manufacture an object very much like this one by allowing a
large sardine to decompose on a plaster slab. Why anyone would bother to do
such a thing, for nine dollars, I have no idea…
Thanks. I hope this isn't too ridiculous.
— Rob
P.S. Are there are good sites for fossils close to New York City?