Pompano
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Location: Bay of Conception and Up North
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Baja Mystery??
In the winter of 1974 I took a 'grasshopper' backcountry trip with my Baja amigo, JW Black, to the Comundu mountain villages. He had invented
these 4X4 offroaders for use in Baja explorations in the 50's and 60's. We camped in an old campsite that Blackjack had used years earlier with Earl
Stanley Gardner. Near that campsite I found a cache of very strange cone-shaped rocks that looked fossilized or petrified. There were dozens of
them laying around that spot. They were all the same size (about the size of a Carte Blanca) with a hole through the center from end to end. We
pondered on what they could be? We conjectured some sort of mud-making insect nest..but why some many individual nests? Very unlike any insect
colonies I had every studied. Some other small animal? A water caused natural formation? And why were they all piled up in one location?
We never reached a satisfactory conclusion as to what the objects were. I threw a couple into my rucksack and we went back on the trail. Maybe
someone out there can solve this old Baja mystery? What the heck are these things?  Give your best guess.
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Pompano
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Location: Bay of Conception and Up North
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PabloS
Nomad
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Registered: 4-8-2003
Location: North central AZ
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? Piedra Camote?
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bajaandy
Senior Nomad
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Location: North County
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I know! I know!
Alien eggs from outer space.
Do I win?
Seriously though, a very curious find. And I would love to hear the real answer.
subvert the dominant paradigm
"If you travel with a man, you must either fall out with him or make him your good friend."
JBL Noel
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Skeet/Loreto
Ultra Nomad
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Hornets Nest petrified
Some where in my Memory there is stories about some very special Black Hornets that made there nests of Clay.
could be, I do not know but it is an interesting question.
Where is the Geo rock???
Skeet/Loreto
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Taco de Baja
Super Nomad
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Location: Behind the Orange Curtain, CA
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Looks like they might be some sort of fossil that has been modified by man. Was there any evidence of Indians in the vicinity of where you found
these...pottery, rock flakes, obsidian flakes, seashell fragments, petroglyphs....
It looks like a shaman sucking tube, or a smoking pipe... and appears to be made out of fossilized ******ite (same material that some oysters and
pectins make their shells out of, similar to calcite (CaCO3), but with a different crystaline structure)
I say modified by man b/c I can't think of an animal that would have a shell like that naturally. However, it may just be a really really old fossil
coral or sponge 500+ Million years ago), which I don't study professionally. The fact that you found a catch of them also suggests a human
connection. Although, someone several years before you came along, could have found them, thought they were neat, like you did and collected a bunch
of then and left then in a pile for you to find.......
And the final question is am I correct in assuming they are 'rock', or are they more like 'hardened clay'? If 'hardened clay' they may possibly just
be a solitary wasp nest, and I just blew a bunch of smoke in the above paragraphs.  But they really look like fossilized ******ite.
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Bajalero
Nomad
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Registered: 11-24-2003
Location: todos santos/ rcho san diego
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I have seen simular "Slugs" used to throw on a potters wheel . Did you ask any nearby residents if they had an idea what they were ?
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Pompano
Elite Nomad
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Location: Bay of Conception and Up North
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Good guess and replys all...even the dried capote and alien fossil eggs!
My final guess has always been some kind of prehistoric wasp or nest building creature. The material seems to be rock hard, but maybe that's because
it's petrified now..I don't really know. Nobody else ever found any like these that I am aware of...and noboby since has ever positively indentified
them. There were only the ones we found..all in a pile. There were middens in that area and Blackjack knew of petros all over the place. We had
stopped at some the day before. Guess it will remain a mystery unless somebody recognizes them.
Blackjack in camp and with his 'grasshopper'.
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Bob H
Elite Nomad
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Location: San Diego
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Pompano, I had been totally unaware that an avocado had rolled under the drivers seat in my F250 cabover camper pickup truck. It must have stayed
under there for months while the truck was closed up and sitting in the sun every day. Well, when I finally found out there was an avocado under that
seat, it looks pretty much the same as your photo, without the hole. Maybe there were a stack of avocados that became petrified. It's kind of
strange that there was never any smell or oder when I opened up my truck. What you have there is possibly ancient guacamole!
Bob H
The SAME boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg. It's about what you are made of NOT the circumstance.
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bajalera
Super Nomad
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Registered: 10-15-2003
Location: Santa Maria CA
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Interesting find, Pompano. These aren't like any peninsula artifacts I've ever seen, and my guess is that the basic material is not man-made. The
Indians had no pottery except in the far north, and the pipes they made out of stone were tubular in shape--quite unlike the photographed item.
Archaeologist Eric Ritter, who has worked in the Comondu area, might have an idea of what they are. A thread concerned with archaeology that ran a
year or so ago was read by a Nomad who knows Dr. Ritter, contacted him, and got an immediate answer.
Perhaps the Nomad will read this thread and help solve another mystery.
Lera
[Edited on 1-13-2005 by bajalera]
\"Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest never happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.\" -
Mark Twain
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thebajarunner
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3718
Registered: 9-8-2003
Location: Arizona....."Free at last from crumbling Cali
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were they all wearing glasses?
or just some of them??
Baja Arriba!!
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JESSE
Ultra Nomad
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Registered: 11-5-2002
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Looks like caca de mammoth.
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