Geologist Indian artifact experts?

mopar440

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My son found a very interesting Rock this summer, a few feet into the St Croix river in Stillwater MN

If that's very odd white marks on it. some of them seem kind of like numbers, symbols, triangles etc

Now you may think, that's easy, anyone could have grave those or painted them.

that's the odd part, you run your fingernails over most of them, and you cannot feel them. And I've tried to scrub it and it ain't paint.

Anybody seen something like this before?

IMG_20191103_153526847.jpg


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Have you checked with the Minnesota State Historical Society? Or Naive American Artist offices? That's where I would start.
 
Have you checked with the Minnesota State Historical Society? Or Naive American Artist offices? That's where I would start.
I have not, just remembered we had it, and figured a few of you guys were around back then ;)
 
Definitely not a "Native American" artifact. Looks like a concretion. The white marks you see are probably reeds, grasses or seaweed, some sort of a fossilized vegatation. Those plants would have been growing, 100 million years ago, give or take. Then a flood happened, and alot of mineral rich sediment was deposited in the area. Then it dried out for a few eons, then there was an earthquake and the giant pancake of dried out mineral rich sediment and trace amounts of vegatation, breaks up into smaller pieces. Then another flood happens, and another, and the floods turn into a river and after smacking into other rocks in the river for the last few Millenia, it's nice and round. That'd be my guess at least. I'm willing to bet, if you cut that stone, the white would be through. Can you tell from looking? Assuming straight reeds or grass, does it look like they pass relatively straight through?
 
I'm an amateur paleontologist.
It appears to me that the markings are naturally caused by the rubbing of other rocks against the round surface of this rock. Quite common for shifting rocks and rounded rocks tend to have these markings more than flat rocks. Water can do amazing things. The more I look at the characters if does appear to be natural.
Can you take any closer pictures of the scribed or patterned areas? What happens when you lick your finger and rub it into one of the characters?
 
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