Hi Phil, I found strange tube-like bones in limestone along a river, which I can’t identify. Can you help? They range about 10mm x 2mm to 100mm x 30mm. I also found a graveyard of small snails by the thousands, and small circular golden ball-like specimens. Kaone Lekoko

Hi Kaone,

I think we are wandering out of the realm of archaeology and in to the kingdom of palaeontology or geology here! But I’ll give it a go!

The biggest clue you have given me is the fact you found them in an area with limestone geology.

Limestone is a sedimentary rock made up of the skeletal remains of trillions and trillions and trillions of small marine animals such as corals, molluscs and forams. Now, I think what you have here are not actually bones but the remains of the hard exoskeletons of prehistoric tube worms.

As for the small golden balls, I’m afraid I don’t know, but my guess would be that they are naturally polished and rolled grains of a different kind of stone that got incorporated in to the limestone as it formed.

Hope this helps Kaone… perhaps we need to ask Ask the Palaeontologist?

All the best,

Phil

Answered by:

Phil Weston

After almost 20 years in field archaeology, Phil finally hung his trowel up and he became a Cultural Heritage consultant with Arcadis. In this role Phil uses his archaeological knowledge to help major developers gain planning permission for huge infrastructure projects. He still remembers his days in the trenches fondly and his favourite sites were an Iron Age village in Sawtry, Cambridgeshire and a Neolithic henge on Anglesey.

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