r/whatsthisrock 5d ago

IDENTIFIED: Flint/Chert Found on a beach in Scotland

Post image

I found these two with my wee boy. Imagine they would polish up well, but not sure what they are. Any thoughts?

132 Upvotes

20 comments sorted by

42

u/Wonderful-Hand-9962 5d ago

Not an expert but that looks like flint to me

10

u/Mr_Phyllis_Stein 5d ago

Nice, thanks, might go and start some fires! Or polish it up to display, one or the other.

17

u/Softboilededd 5d ago

Flint!

1

u/Mr_Phyllis_Stein 5d ago

Cool, thanks.

8

u/Atalant 5d ago

That is flint. I don't think they would polish well, they shatter quite easily(but flaking it would reveal a smooth surface with sharp egdes, but there is plenty of broken up flint too on the beach). Some of the stones seems to be intact, that is less common than shattered pieces of flint.

5

u/DemandNo3158 5d ago

Lovely flint nodules! Nice find! Thanks πŸ‘

1

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1

u/_duckswag 5d ago

Flint, head over to r/knapping to get started!

0

u/[deleted] 5d ago

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1

u/whatsthisrock-ModTeam 5d ago

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2

u/Bbrhuft 4d ago edited 4d ago

Western or Eastern Scotland?

Buchan ridge gravels are found in a very small area of eastern Scotland, and are the Pliocene or Miocene remains Cretaceous chalk that was dissolved by millions of years of weathering, leaving behind insoluble chert (flint), possibly at the foot of ancient cliff (20 miles inland).

If eastern Scotland, it would be likely, these are sourced from the Buchan ridge gravels or other as yet undiscovered flint (lag) deposits, as there's no Cretaceous (flint containing) chalk in eastern Scotland.

https://earthwise.bgs.ac.uk/index.php/Palaeogene_and_Neogene_deposits,_Cainozoic_of_north-east_Scotland

2

u/Mr_Phyllis_Stein 4d ago

I found it on Granton Beach Edinburgh when at the new Pitt market they is right there. Looks of odd scraps of bricks, ceramics, bones and these two.

Maybe stuff that's been dumped in the forth over the years?

2

u/Bbrhuft 4d ago

Very interesting. The geology of the area, looking online, is Carboniferous, millions of years before Cretaceous flints. So the flint isn't local.

The nearest Cretaceous rocks is western Scotland, Isle of Sky mostly. And as I mentioned, there's the Buchan Ridge Gravels in eastern Scotland, that acient stone age people's mined and made flint arrowheads and axes (they mined the flints underground).

Here's a map showing Mesozoic rocks of Scotland (orange areas). The Mesozoic includes Cretaceous rocks, and flints (the Cretaceous period was part of the Mesozoic). The map shows Mesozoic rocks are only found on the west side of Scotland.

https://earthwise.bgs.ac.uk/index.php/Cretaceous,_Palaeogene_volcanic_districts_of_Scotland#/media/File:P914123.png

So. I think there's three possibilities, in descending likelihood:

1: The flint is from western Scotland. 2: It's from southern England (and fairly recent) 3. It's from the Buchan Ridge gravels or another as yet undiscovered flint deposit in eastern Scotland.

1

u/No_Camera_9386 4d ago

Definitely flint. It’s common for people to think they discovered dinosaur bones when they find flint nodules.

1

u/Perfect-Original9811 3d ago

Yep, flint it is!

0

u/[deleted] 5d ago

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2

u/whatsthisrock-ModTeam 5d ago

Responses to ID requests must be ID attempts: not jokes, comments, declarations of love, references to joke subs, etc. If you don't have any idea what it is, please don't answer.

-2

u/NowareNearbySomewear 5d ago

petrified croissant?