Designoids
Apr. 5th, 2004 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinAlso via The Panda's Thumb, here's an astonishing cautionary page about how easy it is to be fooled when looking for ancient artifacts—not by human fraud, but by nature.
Of course, to me it immediately brought to mind the fuss over Martian things that look like fossils (or even artifacts). Most of the things on that page of non-artifacts are crazy-looking concretions. Keeping in mind that the Opportunity landing site in Meridiani Planum, in particular, is almost completely covered with concretions as far as the digicam can see, caution would seem to be in order. (On the other hand, some of those Earthly concretions were partly formed by the traces of living things!)
Of course, to me it immediately brought to mind the fuss over Martian things that look like fossils (or even artifacts). Most of the things on that page of non-artifacts are crazy-looking concretions. Keeping in mind that the Opportunity landing site in Meridiani Planum, in particular, is almost completely covered with concretions as far as the digicam can see, caution would seem to be in order. (On the other hand, some of those Earthly concretions were partly formed by the traces of living things!)
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 06:59 pm (UTC)Designoids
Date: 2004-04-05 09:19 pm (UTC)I'm familiar with the phenomenon, though. My garden has some decorative stones with old accession numbers from Tulane's Middle American Research Institute. I was around there when they deaccessioned some stuff brought in by an amateur antiquitarian of The Fruit Company in the 1920s who'd been too eager to see the hand of man in curiously shaped rocks.