Alien head concretion donated to the public

I’ve had an interesting specimen for a long time in my office and around the house. It’s an iron oxide concretion that, with little imagination, looks like the head of a “gray” alien (or a sleestak).

I posted a bit about it previously here: Sometimes, an alien artifact is just a rock

I had been trying to sell it locally but it was VERY heavy (made of dense minerals), so it would be like trying to ship an 11 inch cannonball. Iron concretions are common in the rock below anthracite coal seams in Pennsylvania. They are the result of complex mineralization processes that took place millions of years after sediment was deposited in swampy areas. The strata here is hundreds of millions of years old.

About a year ago, a person inquired about how much I would ask to sell and ship the object. He said he was a “collector” and would love to have it as a conversation piece. However, his email address gave away his worldview as a Creationist. Creationists have beliefs that conflict with scientific knowledge – about evolution, the age of the earth, and the explanation for artifacts, fossils, and other earth products and formations. I asked him his intentions for the piece but he was flippant about it being just an interesting piece. I could not trust he was being truthful so I shut down the convo. I did not want the piece to be used for misinformation and propaganda. There was a notorious character from this area of PA who, decades ago, would promote unusual-shaped rocks as “human bones”, alleging that ancient people lived at the same time as the coal was formed. The purpose was to discredit geologic knowledge and science in general in promotion of an alternative supernatural worldview. Make no mistake, this kind of nonsense is still going on.

I thought maybe the novelty of the resemblance might catch the eye of a reputable collector. However, I wasn’t going to try that hard to market it. I wasn’t keen on making it into another “Jesus tortilla” object just to make a buck. We just don’t need more of that silliness. And I didn’t want the hassle of auctioning it on eBay and shipping the damn thing.

After a year, I decided to donate it to a local museum. I first contacted the Anthracite Museum in Scranton. But they had several concretions already and declined. However, they contacted the Pennsylvania State Museum on my behalf. The state museum offered to take the piece for their educational program. I was pleased to deliver it to them last week. (I carried it for 5 blocks and got sore arms!) They were delighted with it. From what I understand, it will not be on display but will be used for learning programs, which is even better. More kids will see it in addition to getting legitimate information about how it formed and how pareidolia works. I felt really positive about giving my alien-head concretion to such a good home.

In related news, in the same geological setting as this concretion, a stunning featured area has now been obtained by Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. The “whaleback” is a natural display of folded rock exposed after coal removal. It looks like a surfacing whale. The area also has obvious concretions and holes from former concretions just like the one above in the rock face. The county intends to create access for more people to visit the geologically unique site. It quite a site and I was joyful to hear it is being preserved, since it had previously been on private land and threatened by trespassers, litterbugs, and vandals.

For more on rocks that look like faces, see my Spooky Geology post on Faces in Places: Mimetoliths

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