Fossilizing your RV

Here is a really off-the-wall topic. This one came in from my neighbor while we were discussing his recent camping trip. Bill asked me: "Will my camper be preserved in a rock layer some day?"



Bill's honey. Maybe a fossil someday. Like Bill.

I know that ol' Bill really loves his little Scamper trailer. His wife loves it too, because now she can send him out there when he snores. Bill wondered if there was a way to ensure his trailer would be preserved in a rock layer for future generations to admire. I explained the essential geology to him, but figured some RV.com readers might be equally attached to their rigs and have a similar idea.

Essentially, you want to create a fossil. To do it right, you have to understand how rocks are made, and what kind of rock would be needed to preserve your RV. Bury the poor thing in fine grained sediment- sand or mud. Fill the interior right up to the ceiling so it isn't crushed as rock forms over the coming few million years. Of course, I'm sure you would first obtain all the necessary permits, licenses, and variances, and you certainly wouldn't want to violate any zoning codes, right? Wouldn't want your rig dug up after only a decade when they run a new sewer line through the area! You would want to entomb your prized RV in a place that was less subject to the crushing forces of plate tectonics, or uplift and metamorphism that could squeeze and twist your pride and joy into a twisted wreck. (Bill winced when I mentioned this. Too gruesome a scene for him, so he went into his Scamper for another bottle of wine.)

"Hey Dad! I think I found something!"

 The loose sediment will form rock only if it can escape erosion. It also has to be subjected to pressure, so pick a place where more sediment can be added on top, adding pressure and squeezing the layers beneath (including your RV) into rock over the eons. Probably the best place is on the sea floor, but it wouldn't look good to just shove your camper off a boat out in the ocean. A good place might be beside a slow moving river that periodically floods and deposits new mud. You also need a spot that isn't subject to erosion for a million years or so, such as at the toe of glacier or beside a river. (Ooops! There's a contradiction. This demonstrates the capriciousness of fossil preservation, and how the same conditions that are conducive to preservation can cause them to be eroded away and lost.

Once there are a couple thousand feet of overlying sediment covering your RV, the pressure will begin to squeeze the rock grains together to make rock. That will probably be a little hard on the intended fossil, but if you filled 'er up nice and tight with mud or maybe concrete, that will be minimized.

Now, you need someone to be able to find the fossil. You can either trust to geology and hope that a new-born river will eat away at the rocks in the future and providentially expose the 'fossil', or you can cheat and post the GPS location in some place that will last forever. Maybe someone will start an Internet website to post 'intentional fossil' locations. We all know that the Internet will still make sense in a few million years, right? Plus, because there is so much wisdom on the Internet,
surely someone will know what it looked like originally.

Good luck.

The Oldest Rock in the USA

Doctor Rock,
How old are the oldest rocks in America, and where are they? How can I see them?
Jim Oldman,
Houston

Dear Jim,

An outcrop of Morton Gneiss in the Minnesota River valley

The oldest dated rocks in the USA are in southwestern Minnesota and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. These rocks are called the 'Morton Gneiss' and are 3.6 billion years old, or 80% of the age of the planet (4.54 billion). The gneiss is a metamorphic rock, meaning it began as an even older sedimentary or igneous rock, but we don't know the age of those original rocks. The oldest rocks on earth are from an Eon called the Archean. During the Archean, the cratons--the masses of rock that make up the basic, initial structure of continents--formed. The crustal bodies that formed were smaller than today's continents and are referred to as protocontinents. The oldest known anything on earth are zircon mineral grains 4.4 years old found in rocks in Australia.

Gneiss is a coarsely crystalline foliated

Archean rocks in North America

metamorphic rock resulting from extremes of heat and pressure acting on even older rocks, which deform but do not quite melt. 'Foliated' means the mineral grains are aligned due to pressure. The Morton Gneiss was formed in the intense pressure beneath a long-gone mountain range that rose during the agonizingly slow-motion collision of continental plates. These collisions brought small  land masses together to make up the interior of the North American plate.

This is classic geo-humor!

Outcrops of gneiss in Minnesota can be found near Morton, Redwood Falls, Sacred Heart and Ortonville. To get to Morton, travel west from the Twin Cities on US 212 for about 100 miles, then south on US 71 for another 15 miles to the small town. Minnesota's own EarthScienceGuy website gives more information on how to find outcrops of the rock near Morton.

But, you don't have to go to Morton to see the rock. The Morton Gneiss a widely-used building stone.

Morton Gneiss on the exterior of Seattle's
Exchange Building, 821 Second Avenue.

It is a stunning pink and black swirled rock, and very commonly used for head stones. Commercially known as ‘Rainbow granite', it is the oldest building stone you’ll find in the country, and perhaps the entire world. But, it isn't granite- many building stones carry inaccurate geologic terms. You can see Morton Gneiss in buildings all over the US: the Exchange Building in downtown Seattle, the West Publishing Building in St. Paul, the Banker's Life Insurance Building in Des Moines, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, the Oklahoma Natural Gas Building in Tulsa, the Old State Library in  Richmond, Virginia, Baltimore's Police Headquarters, and the AIG Building in New York. It is distinctive and once you are familiar with the rock's appearance, you may find it somewhere in your town. If you do, contact me via email and send a photo. tuckerd@geol.wwu.edu.
 
Learn more about the Morton Gneiss and see photos of cut rock used as building stone on my friend David Williams' website, 'Stories in Stone'. David is the author of Stories in Stone- Travels through Urban Geology which describes building stones used in the US and their origins all over the world. And here is another great website that describes and photographs the quarry operations.