A couple of weeks back, out in the Shenandoah Valley, I pulled over to show some students the Oranda Formation (a limey shale which was transitional between Sauk sedimentation and the clastic influence of Taconian mountain-building). But in the midst of my arm-waving, an object caught my eye. On the ground amongst umpteen gazillion slabs of shale was this thing:

What is it? Any ideas? Because I was on a geology field trip, I thought, what kind of fossil is that??? but now I don't think it's a fossil. The grid is too regular, and it lacks a familiar biological symmetry. Could it be some part of a car? It was on the roadside, after all. Each of the little grid squares is 1mm on each side. Here's the side of the object:

You can see the long square-cross-sectioned tubes are bounded by a "shell" of some sort. This "shell" is about 0.5 mm thick. The arc of that curving "shell" suggests it may once have been part of a larger cylindrical shape, with a diameter approximately the same as a 1-liter Nalgene bottle. Lastly, here's an image of the other side (opposite picture #2):

Now that looks like some sort of biological encrustation -- but could it just be slag? There's definitely bubble-like features. My current suspicion is that this is some automobile part that got too hot. This bubbly mess in photo #3 suggests it melted down, perhaps causing the owner to pitch it on the roadside. That sort of waste disposal happens a fair bit in Virginia.

Any ideas what this thing is? Thanks.

Labels: field trips, unknowns