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Soooo... I arrived on campus and security came over and said: "You're just the man were looking for. We'd like you to come and look at something." Uhm... ominous, but OK.
Follow them to back room & they explain they found a mystery package that they'd like me to ID.
Huh.
Turns out someone left this bag, addressed to @cbuniversity President, in front of the business building. No note. Just the President's name in sharpie.
Huh.
Turns out someone left this bag, addressed to @cbuniversity President, in front of the business building. No note. Just the President's name in sharpie.
They called police, who vetted it as safe: it was full of rocks. Could I ID them?
OK, I'll try...
OK, I'll try...
Inside the bag are several chunks of limestone. Two of them have nicely preserved rugose corals... One has lat long coordinates for where they came from.
So: mystery bag person, if you're on Twitter... These are from the Early Carboniferous Windsor Group, roughly 350 million years ago.
They were originally deposited in a shallow warm sea. Unit description:
They're rugosan corals. They were originally made of calcite, just like the limestone, but they've been replaced with silica (quartz), which is why they pop out of the easily weathered limestone like that.
Here's a reconstruction of what they might have looked like when alive. They're commonly called 'horn corals', since they look like, well, horns. They lived from the Ordovocian period all the way to the Permian, getting snuffed in the big mass extinction.
One of these slabs has got beautiful fossils on them that will live in the geolog lab from now on. So thank you! Feel free to get in touch if you want to learn more.
And President Dingwall: If you're looking for your rocks, they're in A-108. Come get them. ;)
[Excuse the typos! Was working on a rapidly dying phone.] :)
