Monday, April 9, 2012

Easter eggs and giant boulders

Dragon eggs... hooligans gallstones... the bowling balls of the giants... dinosaur poop... Stonehenge of New Zealand... a.k.a. The Moeraki Boulders.   Perfectly round and scattered along the beaches are these impressive stones.  Their round shape was not formed in the same way other rocks are smoothed and rounded by the rough waters of a river or the ocean.  They are buried and only exposed as the beaches and land around them are eroded away.  They began forming some 60 million years ago on the ancient sea floor, made mostly of mud, silt and clay which are then cemented together by calcite.   The inner core of the stones is softer, as the calcite becomes more concentrated on the outer shell of the stones over time the stones begin to crack from the inside out.  Once these cracks were formed the soft inner core was hollowed out, as you can see these hollow rocks are big enough to fit a Gracie...
It was a beautiful day, the water was freezing as usual but that didn't stop us from wetting our toes. 
I thought it was kind of fitting, spending Easter Sunday learning about the boulders, they're like mother nature's hidden Easter eggs.


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