Looks like a fossil bone or petrified wood...reads like iron...any ideas??

[Jolly Mon]

I found this item today while diving with a pi detector. It was found with some bronze ship spikes and what is probably some very old lead hull sheathing. I thought at first the item was just a chunk of iron, but on closer examination came to believe it was a piece of fossilized bone...not uncommon where it was found. I tested it with my Xterra 70 when I got home and it reads -8. In other words pretty much pure iron...except that the signal is not nearly as strong as you would expect from an iron object this size. It does not look like iron at all...it looks like either a piece of petrified wood or a piece of fossil bone. The thing is very heavy for its size and is hard as a rock. Testing with a Garrett Pro-pointer yields a consistent signal over the entire surface, front and back. It is also completely non-magnetic. Any ideas

 

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[lookindown]

Very interesting...it does look like fossil bone...hope someone IDs it.

 

[yelnif]

Hello Jolly Mon, nice finds- I'm thinking that it might be a tooth from a BIG sucker. The first pic shows the enamel side the second is the inside showing a slight cupping from the straight edge up @ 1/3 the tooth length- just like our teeth are. Run your finger on the inside of you front teeth and you will be able to feel what I'm trying to explain. The third one looks like the area that would have attached to the jaw bone. You might really have something there- hope so.

HH yelnif

 

[JOHUNT]

Gray or white cast iron? Wrought iron?

 

[CRUSADER]

Iron can leach into lots of materials, specially in wet conditions.

 

[Dreadnox]

It looks to me like a piece of either shell plating off an old ship or very posibly from the markings you could have a piece of rare meteorite. I would def have that tested for the later of the two. Those can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars an ounce. Let us know what you find out it has me interested in knowing for sure. A friend of mine several years ago found a piece of metiorite in his field plowing and is now retired from what some research institute paid him for it, which he would never say how much they gave him LOL.

 

[Rool]

Magnetic wood or ancient metal ?

I found this piece on the beach in an area with a lot of iron. There is no industry or past industry in the area. It looks like a piece of wood and is built of layers material. I can only imagine it was a very old piece metal from a ship or its a piece of wood that has absorbed iron over the years. You can see that it can be lifted with a magnet and weighs in the region of 1 kg which is a lot heaver than a piece of wood the same size.
Any ideas would be great.

I found this item today while diving with a pi detector. It was found with some bronze ship spikes and what is probably some very old lead hull sheathing. I thought at first the item was just a chunk of iron, but on closer examination came to believe it was a piece of fossilized bone...not uncommon where it was found. I tested it with my Xterra 70 when I got home and it reads -8. In other words pretty much pure iron...except that the signal is not nearly as strong as you would expect from an iron object this size. It does not look like iron at all...it looks like either a piece of petrified wood or a piece of fossil bone. The thing is very heavy for its size and is hard as a rock. Testing with a Garrett Pro-pointer yields a consistent signal over the entire surface, front and back. It is also completely non-magnetic. Any ideas

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