What's This? #36, Can you identify this? Options

[Denise]

This one should be fun! Here is a really cool one Timmy found the other day in the yard digging and classifying some rocks.
I'm such a proud mom! ..........As soon as he found this one, he said he could tell it was something special.

Well he was right....... Can you tell what this is?

Hard to tell from the pictures, but there is a small hole that goes all the way through the center of it. Its about 2 1/2" long.






Who can tell me what this one is?

[kmontoya911]

Wild guess? A petrified bone fragment. The hole is where the marrow would have been. the larger end is the head of a bone socket.

[Woody]

I'll take a swing at it.

At first I thought it might be a casting of a deep water Chimney vent. But As I looked at the view in "hi-mag" I noticed the ends of the hole lacked the discoloration that one would expect from any thermal tube. So I now vote for it being a cousin of the vent tube, a Worm Tube Casting. I have seen some items similar to this and might be way off the mark but hey, at least I'm in the game. Have a good one, Woody.

[marntson]

I cant think of the name for it but I am going to say "Petrified Lightning". God that makes me sound like a dumb redneck.

[CP]

Good job everyone, this one is a tough one from just a picture or two.
marnston has got it figured out, it is a fulgurite or petrified lightning. Not a mineral and not actually petrified (mineral replacing organic), but form when lightning strikes the ground. In less than 1 second the temperature in the sand/soil can reach 3,200' F and then cools immediately forming these fused tubular formations, some branching off like trees and can be much larger.

Here's a pic of another one found yesterday in the same dig hole but only about the size of quarter lengthwise. Keep your eyes open out there, you never know what you might find.

[leonard]

Good job everyone, this one is a tough one from just a picture or two.
marnston has got it figured out, it is a fulgurite or petrified lightning. Not a mineral and not actually petrified (mineral replacing organic), but form when lightning strikes the ground. In less than 1 second the temperature in the sand/soil can reach 3,200' F and then cools immediately forming these fused tubular formations, some branching off like trees and can be much larger.

Here's a pic of another one found yesterday in the same dig hole but only about the size of quarter lengthwise. Keep your eyes open out there, you never know what you might find.

Watch the movie Sweet Home Alabama for some examples of it. They were out driving steel rods into the sand to attract lightning. It looked like a good way to get killed to me. I don't know if the ones they showed were actually real but they really looked neat and had a resemblance to yours. It was fun watching Reese Witherspoon also. I've had to watch it several times. Just to see how they did it of course.
Leonard

[Denise]

Great guesses without any clues guys!

The smaller one even has a hole in each tip. These things are pretty cool, and Timmy was tickled to hear what it was and how it was created.

Here is a link to Wiki explaining more about them....
Fulgurite

[Denise]

Watch the movie Sweet Home Alabama for some examples of it. They were out driving steel rods into the sand to attract lightning. It looked like a good way to get killed to me. I don't know if the ones they showed were actually real but they really looked neat and had a resemblance to yours. It was fun watching Reese Witherspoon also. I've had to watch it several times. Just to see how they did it of course.
Leonard

These that were found were not provoked by us, there arent even any power lines and we sure werent out placing lightning rods around.
Im guessing that the ones that are provoked might be the ones with larger hollowed out centers? I would have to dig into reading about them more to know for sure. I have seen pics on the net where these things get as big as walking sticks.

[Coalbunny]

Petrified lightening, huh? Interesting. I was about to comment on how much it looked like a fossilized boson phase induction coil....

[Denise]

Timmy has really been watching the classifier closely now. He's a true Fulgurite hunter.
Here is another one he found in the same hole. This is a pretty tiny one, but shows all the signs of being a Fulgurite.
Good job Timmy!