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Nicholas La Joie posted a new specimen in the group Beach Fossils from the myFOSSIL app 3 years, 5 months ago
3 years, 5 months ago3 years, 5 months agoNicholas La Joie has contributed specimen mFeM 89009 to myFOSSIL!
Nicholas La Joie posted a new specimen in the group Beach Fossils from the myFOSSIL app 3 years, 5 months ago
Nicholas La Joie has contributed specimen mFeM 89009 to myFOSSIL!
bivalves or brachiopods
Thanks! Is there a way to easily tell how old it might be?
In a word, no. No one can determine the age of a rock simply by a picture.
To be more specific:
If you found it within the bedrock itself, if the rock formations in the area have been mapped, if the geologic maps have been incorporated into macrostrat, then you can look up the location of where you found it and see what formations have been mapped at that locality: https://macrostrat.org/map/#/z=3.2/x=-71.7258/y=39.6882/bedrock/lines/. If you know the formation, then you have an idea of how old it is. I would caution that Macrostrat is a 2-D depiction of a 3-D world, just because you are at a location, depending on the layer you found it in, that is not necessarily the formation it was found in.
If you found it as a rock on the surface or on the beach, then it could have been weathered and transported from elsewhere and you need to understand where it might have been transported from by the currents, rivers, storms or even by people. Then you might backtrack and identify the likely rocks it came from.
Or, if the rock was formed in the right conditions and has the right minerals, you can try isotope dating:
https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/earth-inside-and-out/zircon-chronology-dating-the-oldest-material-on-earth
but it has limitations as well and is certainly not easy to do.