# Some really cool Rocks



## Care4all (Jun 6, 2010)

This beach was in Castine, Maine....we went on a ride there last week....

I have no idea what these shelled, fossilized creatures are that were stuck to the rocks, but it looked really cool.

Anyone with knowledge on what the shelled creatures are on these rocks, I would LOVE to know!

the whole beach was rocks, all kinds of different rocks and minerals...volcanic rock as well...I could have spent hours looking at them....such a variety....and a lot of garnet red glass like stuff embedded in other rocks....just cool cool cool.























smooth black lava rock


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## Oddball (Jun 6, 2010)

I believe those are barnacles.


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## RadiomanATL (Jun 6, 2010)

They're called barnacles.

Get used to them. They're like the lice of the oceans.

http://www.google.com/images?q=Barnacles&um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&channel=s&tbs=isch:1&sa=N&start=20&ndsp=20


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## Valerie (Jun 6, 2010)

Dude said:


> I believe those are barnacles.





Yes, definitely barnacles...


Barnacle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Care4all (Jun 6, 2010)

ty for the info guys and gal!

Here was the setting, we were there till the sun went down...











the Hubby


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## Valerie (Jun 6, 2010)

Care4all said:


> ty for the info guys and gal!
> 
> Here was the setting, we were there till the sun went down...
> 
> ...





Great pics!








> Barnacles are crustaceans that have jointed legs and shells of connected overlapping plates. Instead of crawling after food, they glue themselves to rocks, ships, pillings, abalones, and maybe even whales and wait for food to wash by. When barnacles are under water or when a wave washes over them, they reach out little feathery barbed legs to strain out plankton and absorb oxygen.  A barnacle's fertilized eggs hatch into larva, then they leave the parents' shells. They spend their youth swimming. After many molts they settle down to adulthood, held permanently by one of the strongest known natural adhesives. The barnacle's enemies are worms, snails, sea stars, fish like sheephead, certain shorebirds, and oil spills. Some are parasites inside crabs or in other animals.
> 
> barnacles


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## Zoom-boing (Jun 6, 2010)

Barnacle Boy, from SpongeBobSquarePants.  Voiced by Tim Conway.


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## American Horse (Jun 6, 2010)

Care4all said:


> This beach was in Castine, Maine....we went on a ride there last week....
> 
> I have no idea what these shelled, fossilized creatures are that were stuck to the rocks, but it looked really cool.
> 
> ...


I had no clue what a barnacle looked like; I thought barnacles weren't commonly found in freshwater, so this must not only be a lake but a tidal estuary where sea water encroaches? 

But the "rocks of all kinds" in your picture look to be a typical glacial moraine outflow deposit.   Rocks like these have been transported to where they are now from the north-west of their present location.  What you are looking at is commonly called glacial till or boulder clay.  The land around this lake, except for the bedrock is covered with boulder clay from glaciers,  is set into the overlying boulder-clay, and the fine silt that formerly agglomerated those rocks has been carried away by erosion leaving undifferentiated  gravel. About every rock in your picture is an "eratic." It may have, or even most likely has been transported thousands of miles, all the while being fractured into those small round rocks.  Very little of it will have sharp edges as would gravel more native to the area have. 

My own state of Indiana has been encroached upon several times by glaciers, and almost all of it is covered with glacial moraines, except for one small upland area.  I live in the "point" of that small upland "driftless area" which has only native rock, which also means it is boring.  But at the edges, and particularly to the west of the point (in the map below - right next to the "N" in the word "section") is a large valley system with deposits called "The American Bottoms" where streams which  flowed westerly from the higher ground and up against the glacier experienced a *rare* dynamic;  the lakes that were formed in the valleys never overtopped the glacial ice dam or the geological ridge systems to the south. That was enabled because of a porous layer of bottom rock which allowed the water to drain away at about the same volume as it melted off the glacier.  As a result several geological changes occurred there, the least of which is that we have an isolated valley filled with deposit of rocks transported thousands of miles from the far north, and over many millenia. 

One oddity of the dynamic along the edges is that on both sides of that "point"....gold is found in those hills and valleys.  In the 80s a Canadian company (Exmin Resources Inc.) set up a satellite office in our town, partly because the Indiana office of the Geologic Survey is here at IU and partly because of the deposits resulting from the dynamics mentioned above in the surrounding area.







This Map of Glaciers in North America shows how *rare* 
it is, only occuring at a few places across the continent.  





If you got into a study of your local geology, Care, you would no doubt find it fascinating beyond anything you had considered possible.


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## namvet (Jun 6, 2010)

good pics. lift up the rocks and you'll find liberals


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