If there's something strange in your neighborhood, who you gonna call?

 
Those that watched movies in the mid-1980's or had kids who watched television in the late 1980's will instantly recognize the title of this posting as the first line of the theme song for the movie Ghostbusters,  a 1984 comedy film starring Bill Murray,  Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis as three parapsychologists who start a ghost-catching business in New York City, with Sigourney Weaver as their most important client and Rick Moranis as her neighbor.   It was also the theme song for The Real Ghostbusters, an animated television series, a spinoff of the 1984 movie, that ran from 1986 to 1991. 

The question posed by the song title “If there's something strange in your neighborhood, who you gonna call?” seems to apply to the following three specimens that were recently quarried from Potsdam sandstone north of Kingston.   These strange specimens  were shown to me on Sunday by Jimmy Jackson, the owner of Rideauview Contracts, which operates a number of quarries in Eastern Ontario, including the sandstone quarry at Ellisville, Ontario

Jimmy Jackson had a lot of fun with the specimens.   The first he called “the Wolf” and the second, “an insole, size 11.”    I have to admit that I’ve never  seen anything like these specimens.

Specimen 1 - The Wolf

 

The first specimen has white sandstone arguably taking the shape of a wolf on the vertical surface of a block of  red sandstone,  and was collected because of that image.

When split horizontally it shows white sandstone taking various rounded, globular shapes in the red sandstone.

Specimen 2

A second similar specimen, also split horizontally (and partially wetted by Jimmy to enhance the contrast in colours), shows  similar rounded, globular shapes.

The next photo is a side view of part of the second specimen.

The first two specimens, each of which is in two parts,  were quarried from the same beds that produced  specimen 7 on my July 16, 2015 posting and specimens 1 and 2  on my June 30, 2015 posting.  I believe the beds to be the Hannawa Falls Member of the Covey Hill Formation of the Potsdam Group. 

When asked by Jimmy to provide an explanation for the shape I had to admit that I couldn’t answer his question.   On further reflection I suspect that it could be an example of chemical precipitation (leisegang banding  is present at other spots in the quarry, and a number of cylindrical dewatering structures have been found within 30 meters of these beds).   However, as the white sandstone is the colour of the overlying sandstone I suspect that it is more likely that cavities developed in the red sandstone beds that were filled in with the white sandstone.  This of course raises the question “What caused the cavities?”   Was it water percolating through the ground or burrowing?

Specimen 3 - Insole, Size 11

 

 

I suspect that there is a more scientific way to describe this shape, but Jimmy’s description of a size 11 insole is probably the most apt.  

This specimen I believe to be an example of chemical precipitation ( and it looks like banding   present at other spots in the quarry). 

I had thought about contacting another geologist for a second opinion, and adding his name in the title of the blog after the question “If there's something strange, in your neighbourhood,
Who you gonna call?”    On further reflection I realized this would be a mistake.  First, you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find a paleontologist or geologist with a name that has the same number of syllables as the word “Ghostbusters” with a strong first syllable.   Second, I realized that this person would have to have a sense of humour, and wouldn’t mind being tagged with the Ghostbusters theme song.

Christopher Brett
Perth, Ontario

I ain't afraid of no ghost.   I ain't afraid of no ghost.

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Added August 20th:
I received the following helpful comment:
“Hi, Christopher--I've been enjoying your blog posts!
I suspect the first two specimens are reduction halos, similar to those seen here: http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~imw/Budleigh-Salterton.htm (scroll down to about halfway down the long page). I've seen examples in many red iron-stained rocks. I'd concur with your interpretation of "specimen 3", mineral banding ("liesegang").
--Howard Allen”

I’ve had a look at the photos on the web page that Howard Allen referenced and agree with him that the photos on my blog could show a similar feature.   The web site at the link he provides mentions that  the “the reduction features are locally associated with dark grey radioactive nodules that contain high proportions of metallic elements including vanadium, uranium, copper and nickel”.   There are concentrations of  minerals at the centers of the globular features in my photos, which could we worth investigating.  

That web site also references the paper: Bateson, J.H. and Johnson, C.C. 1992. Reduction and related phenomena in the New Red Sandstone of south-west England. British Geological Survey Technical Report, WP/92/1 , which can be downloaded from http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/509450/

Bateson and Johnson mention:
“Hofmann (1991) in his study concludes that the weight of evidence from a wide variety of locations, geological environments and ages, points towards a genesis for the reduction phenomena and accumulation of exotic elements that assumes a supply of porewater containing both the reductants and exotica (p 121). The localisation of the reduction spots, according to Hofmann's hypothesis, would seem to be related to the presence of bacteria.”

HOFMANN, Beda A. 1991. Mineralogy and geochemistry of reduction spheroids in Red Beds.
Mineralogy and Petrology, Vol 44, 107-124.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01167103

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