INQUISITR.COM / Entertainment

Huge Petoskey Stone, Relic From The Days Michigan Swam Under Tropical Sea, Found By Rock Hunter

By Shelley Hazen
Published on: 01:39 PST, Sep 24, 2015

Tim O’Brien is a dedicated rock hunter. Though, when you find a Petoskey stone weighing a hefty 93 pounds, there’s no way you’re going to leave it behind.

It took O’Brien three days to dig the stone from the bottom of Lake Michigan, he told the Grand Rapids Free Press. It was half-buried in sand several feet from shore.

Tim spotted the stone a week ago, but it was impossible to remove by hand. So he brought his girlfriend along the next day to help. He couldn’t spot it again because of waves. But the third time he went back to the site, September 22, he did find it.

He brought a trowel along and began the arduous process of digging it out of the sand. When he was done, he had to lug the 93-pound Petoskey stone up 114 steps to get it off the beach, and then dumped it into his truck.

Now, the Petoskey stone will sit in his front yard, a “conversation piece,” he said.

O’Brien works at a garden store with a rock shop. People often bring in stones to polish there, but this one might be far too big to tackle. So, the 93-pound rock will stay just as it is — au naturel.

According to the Detroit Free Press, the Petoskey stone is fossilized coral found all over Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula. President Obama even has one, but not quite so big as Tim’s.

But the news that a rock hunter in Michigan dug up a huge Petoskey stone doesn’t mean too much if you don’t know what it is. Luckily, the Petoskey Area Visitors Bureau has the answer.

It all began 350 million years ago, before even dinosaurs walked the Earth. Back then, Michigan was near the equator under a warm saltwater sea. And in that sea among tropical reefs lived a coral called hexagonaria percarinata. When Michigan was finally pushed north by the Earth’s plates, the sea gave way to dry land; two million years ago, glaciers spread those coral, now fossilized, all over the Lower Peninsula.

And what would become known as the Petoskey stone scattered all over the area.

There’s a lovely story behind the fossil, too, based on its unique appearance. The Petoskey Stone is made of six-sided corallites, or the crowded skeletons of coral polyps — which are living creatures. This hexagonal shape and thin lines that spread from the dark center, also called the “eye,” look like “Rays of the Rising Sun” to those with an imagination.

“Rays of the Rising Sun” is also the basis of the name, Petoskey. It grew out of the Ottawa word Pet-O-Sega, the birth name of the son of a French fur trader and his Indian wife. Born in 1787, Pet-O-Sega grew up near Harbor Springs, Michigan, and became a successful landowner, businessman, and Ottawa Indian Chief. By 1873, a settlement — Petoskey — was named after him.

This place soon became the favorite vacation haunt for Victorian tourists — they loved the fossilized coral, and often took some home as souvenirs. These days, the Petoskey Stone can be found in Lake Michigan, where O’Brien found his. They can also be found in roadbeds, gravel pits, and farmer’s fields.

But it has to be wet in order to bring out that “rising sun” pattern. Otherwise, they look like ordinary limestone.

Read more about the fossil here.

[Photo Courtesy Nancy Bauer / Shutterstock]

Share this article: Huge Petoskey Stone, Relic From The Days Michigan Swam Under Tropical Sea, Found By Rock Hunter
michigan Geology
More from Inquisitr