This is very scary for me - diving into geology about which I know little. (I know rocks are made from something pretty hard and water is hard on rocks - unless you want to see a beautiful canyon, and then water is good for that.)
According to Mike Farris's guide book to climbing, Red
Wing and Willow River have the same dolomite rock which he calls "Oneida." Winona State University calls it "Oneota "Dolomite."
It's apparently part of the Ordovician geological age which ended more than a couple of years ago. (I vaguely remember that time; I think the Beatles were very popular then.) Fauna that was around then is described here. At the top of "Looking for Lust" at Red Wing, it looks like fossilized coral and the Ordovician Age is when coral was invented.
If it really is called Oneota, it's named after the Oneota Culture who lived in the Red Wing area between about 1000 and 1650 AD. And they used some of these rocks to make cherts - which were their stone tools. "Both the Oneota and Shakopee varieties of Prairie du Chien chert are moderate quality cherts that can be difficult to knap in their natural state. Heat treating is clearly a prerequisite for successful flintknapping. Archaeological analyses of lithic debitage from American Indian sites indicates that the material was usually heat treated. Heat treating experiments of Prairie du Chien chert have found that a temperature range of about 600 to 675 degrees Fahrenheit is required." (According to THE PLATFORM -a publication of the Minnesota Knappers Guild.)
All of the above could be totally wrong, so take it with a grain of sand - which is what the stuff was made from in the first place.
1 comment:
Thank you Mr. Wizard, very interesting follow up to our conversation. I noticed the fossils of the articulate brachiopods, they were very well spoken!
Post a Comment