Moeraki boulders (Oamuru) 070211

Those huge meatballs are not either giant seal's asses or prehistoric fossils of some fungi or not even dinosaur's eggs. They are just rocks; rocks almost completely spherical piled up on Moeraki beach. They are formed in a similar way to pearls do. When a grain of sand annoys an oyster, the animal starts secreting nacre to isolate it. So due to the accumulation of several layers of nacre around the grain, pearls naturally end up being spherical. A kind of similar process happened with the formation of these rocks: particles accumulated in marine sediments initiated precipitation of calcium carbonate around them 65 milion of years ago. The subsequent descent of sea level and the erosion from water and wind made them surface again leading to this capricious distribution.
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