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Please Can Anyone Identify This Rock?


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Stumped me... I'd be real curious if anyone else knows though, and if not, I hope you post back with what it is if you find out.

I'd try dropping that little sphere in some acid to see if it reacts, if you are comfortable with that (determine if it's quartz or calcite). Might be one to take in to the university or a geology museum there if you have one nearby. 

Do you know what formation it came out of? Well formed spheres like that don't often form in nature. Things that occur to me offhand are biogenic (clams/pearls for instance) or maybe something like spherules (tektites) from meteorite impacts (these would be insoluble in acid). Concretions can be spheres too, but I don't think quartz forms concretions, I suppose calcite might though. Knowing the formation age/composition would help narrow things down. 

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Here is a blurb from a book I found on spherule layers in sedimentary rock, a result of meteorite impacts. Not saying this is what it is, but it's one of the likely candidates. I'm guessing you weren't in precambrian rock agate hunting in Utah, but the idea is the same.

The Precambrian Earth

P.G. Eriksson, ... O. Catuneanu, in Developments in Precambrian Geology, 2004

Spherule-rich layers

Spherules occur in discrete layers that form regionally persistent markers beds. For example, the S1 layer in the Hooggenoeg Formation of the Onverwacht Group persists along strike for tens of kilometres around folds in the Barberton greenstone belt (Lowe et al., 2003) and the Wittenoom layer is preserved over tens of thousands of square kilometres in the relatively undeformed strata of the Hamersley basin (Simonson, 1992). The areas over which the spherule layers were originally deposited were presumably much larger. The global extent of the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K/T) boundary layer proves that spherules generated by one large impact can carpet the surface of the entire planet (Smit, 1999). It has already been suggested that individual impacts in both the Early and Late Archaean may have each generated contemporaneous spherule layers in South Africa and Australia (Simonson et al., 1999; Byerly et al., 2002). Confirmation that one or both of these layers were dispersed globally must await detailed scrutiny of contemporaneous strata at localities scattered widely around the Earth.

Most of the spherule layers recognised so far are anomalously coarse sand-rich beds within mud-dominated successions. Based on sedimentary structures displayed in both the mud- and sand-rich layers, most of these successions were deposited below wave base in deeper water environments. The spherule layers per se commonly display large rip-up clasts from subjacent strata (Figs. 1.3-4b, c), normal grading, and/or cross-stratification (Fig. 1.3-4b). The Late Archaean to Palaeoproterozoic spherule layers are enclosed in muddy strata which are thinly laminated and show few or no signs of deposition from currents or waves (Fig. 1.3-4d; Hassler and Simonson, 2001). The Early to Middle Archaean spherule layers were deposited in a broader spectrum of environments involving a mix of shallower to deeper water and even subaerially emergent environments such as fan-deltas (Lowe et al., 2003). In all settings, the spherule layers are products of anomalously high-energy events. At least in some cases, the source of the high energy appears to have been tsunami waves and attendant currents induced by the impacts that created the spherules themselves (Hassler et al., 2001; Lowe et al., 2003). In other cases, they formed thick layers with coarse clasts deposited by mass movements (Simonson, 1992; Hassler and Simonson, 2001). Regardless of how and where they were deposited, spherule layers are highly distinctive. Under optimal conditions, they can be recognised confidently on the basis of a single exposure one metre wide (e.g., the early Archaean S4 layer; Lowe et al., 2003) or by examination of a single sample from a drill core with a hand lens (e.g., the Late Archaean Jeerinah layer; Simonson et al., 2000b).

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I've been asking on a different group and someone thought it could be old road paint with the glass reflective beads in it. I'd much rather it be something from a meteorite, 😁! I will certainly be back to tell you once I find out. I have sent an email to the University of Utah geology department. 

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DEFINITIVE answer... I decided to take a red hot needle and see what happened when I touched it because if it's road paint it's a polymer thermoplastic and google says it will remelt at 200°. The red hot needle sunk right in, so it's road paint with glass reflective beads! My very special and rare find, lol. 

Thank you for your help, I really appreciate it. 😁

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ID of year. Thanks for the update. 😆

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At least it didn't attack you when you poked it with the hot needle! 😆

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