found a tree stump while cutting liverock

[jolson10450]

well... while i was trying to hack 99% of my blue xenia down i was cutting one of the pieces of rock and smelled a funny smell... decided to chip away at the rock to see what it was and i found a tree stump inside of the piece of liverock! seems very off that this would happen.... but it was in my tank like this. i wonder how it could of got like that? at first i thought it was a bone but i am 99% sure it is a tree stump.

here is a picture:

http://i476.photobucket.com/albums/rr126/boonesville/2011-05-24213832.jpg

i outlined it in red to show you where the actual piece is and that there is liverock still attached to it:
http://i476.photobucket.com/albums/rr126/boonesville/stumpwithredmarks.jpg

[jimsflies]

Could it have been a mangrove?

[EMUreef]

Could it have been a mangrove?

ill have to agree its probably a mangrove stump as they do grow like trees and look like them.

[jolson10450]

it seems almost to big to be a mangrove stump and it does not branch outward like mangroves do... not saying that is not what it is but it does not look like that to me... i wonder how old it is, which i could do some dating research on it. it is possible that there was once a tree growing and that area flooded and became a reef area over a long period of time resulting in this.

just strange to me, cant say i ever seen a piece of wood in general embedded into a piece of liverock.

[EMUreef]

it seems almost to big to be a mangrove stump and it does not branch outward like mangroves do... not saying that is not what it is but it does not look like that to me... i wonder how old it is, which i could do some dating research on it. it is possible that there was once a tree growing and that area flooded and became a reef area over a long period of time resulting in this.

just strange to me, cant say i ever seen a piece of wood in general embedded into a piece of liverock.

you know how big mangroves can get right?

http://www.climateshifts.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/mangrove0459sm.jpg

[jolson10450]

you know how big mangroves can get right?

http://www.climateshifts.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/mangrove0459sm.jpg

yeah i just always though they had split roots not one central root though right? but it looks like those is just one central root..... could be, what do the cores of them look like... you can see it clearly in the picture that it does not have rings like a normal tree so if the core looks like that then it is probably a mangrove root from however many years ago

[EMUreef]

yeah i just always though they had split roots not one central root though right? but it looks like those is just one central root..... could be, what do the cores of them look like... you can see it clearly in the picture that it does not have rings like a normal tree so if the core looks like that then it is probably a mangrove root from however many years ago

some of the split roots can be pretty thick, so it might be that as i doubt the roots have rings.

[jay13]

ummm kinda looks like a femer bone. from the proximal head near your hip down into the shank of the bone. that would be a little unnerving though.....

[rmalone]

I agree it looks much more like a bone to me also. Could it be the skeletal base of a big ol euphyllia that was then covered in some other coral after died? I have a digi and a spongodes that have kind of wrapped around each, other there are branches of digi that I know have a core of spongodes skeleton.

[jay13]

well... while i was trying to hack 99% of my blue xenia down i was cutting one of the pieces of rock and smelled a funny smell... decided to chip away at the rock to see what it was and i found a tree stump inside of the piece of liverock! seems very off that this would happen.... but it was in my tank like this. i wonder how it could of got like that? at first i thought it was a bone but i am 99% sure it is a tree stump.

here is a picture:

http://i476.photobucket.com/albums/rr126/boonesville/2011-05-24213832.jpg

i outlined it in red to show you where the actual piece is and that there is liverock still attached to it:
http://i476.photobucket.com/albums/rr126/boonesville/stumpwithredmarks.jpg

the bottom picture is almost a perfect cross section of what a large femur bone looks like... you sure that it is wood?

[jolson10450]

ummm kinda looks like a femer bone. from the proximal head near your hip down into the shank of the bone. that would be a little unnerving though.....

yeah at first i did think it was a bone but you can flake part of it off sort of like a tree and it has properties of wood... if it was bone i would of thought it would be a little harder but it does look like a bone.

and for the rest, the root just seems odd... not to sure it could be a mangrove who knows...

does anyone know anyone who does lab work that might want to do a fun test project on this? i saved it just as pictured and it is out of water just in case there was anyone wanting to do some research or something with it trying to find out what it is/ how old it is

[jay13]

a simple scraping and a microscope. you should be able to tell the cellular structure that way. wood and bone are way different.

[fishtal]

Interesting. All of the Mangroves that I've seen grow in areas with deep, muddy, sand beds rather than rocky areas.

[Skyhigh]

I would bet it is a gorg stump.

[Sir Patrick]

I like the thought that it could be a bone myself.....hoffas bone- at one time wearing cement boots.