I know you're a busy lady, but I want you to know that I really enjoy your RUclips video's. It's hard to find anyone enthusiastic about anything these days, other than politics or social media. AND FURTHERMORE, don't sell yourself short - you bring a very specific type of vibrancy to all of your subjects. Keep up the good work!
Several yrs ago I bought a load of washed gravel from a gravel pit near Evart MI. In the process of spreading the gravel around my landscaping we found several pieces of Petoskey Stones. It sure made spreading several hundred pounds of stones a lot more fun!
My best friend and I have found Petoskey stones on the shores of Manitoulin Island, the east coast of Lake Huron, and I found a huge one on a farmer's rock pile here in southern Ontario!! Thank you for the insight on these beautiful stones.
When I was a child in Michigan, my grandpa gave me a Petoskey Stone. The patterns on it made me curious and I spent some time in my 20s (when you have time for nonsense) learning about them. I'm old, now, and I have forgotten what I learned. But I still have that rock. It looks just like your, having been through a tumbler and polished up nice and pretty. Now, I have a grandchild that likes natural stuff. I think she's old enough to pass on my grandpa's Petoskey Stone.
Having spent my early childhood in Michigan and Summering there with my Dad, camping in The UP back in 1985, these videos take me back to the wonders of nature I experienced during that time of my life.
Your love of your work, truly shines through you, and I love learning about the subjects you are educating us about, because of your spirited, and enthusiastic way of sharing your knowledge. Thank you very, very much
I bought a load of 2” stone to fill in a space between my garage and house. I live in a Michigan town named Central Lake about 25 miles from Petoskey. I had an attending nurse for wound care who also was a rock and mineral collector. She picked through my rocks and got about 20 or 30 Petoskey stones. They require polishing and finishing, but the are prevalent. They also can be found on the shores of Lake Huron between Caseville, Mi, specifically Oak Point to Port Austin beaches. Not as prevalent but in the 60+ years I spend there I found a few.
I live in Petoskey! Grew up here too. My family had a business making Petoskey stone jewelry. I have such an eye for them that I could fill a 5 gallon bucket of them in a couple hours. If you ever want to revisit this subject, I can help you find them! Also we have Charlevoix stones here which is another fossilized coral🖤
Oh, man, that's amazing! Also, thank you for the offer - I might take you up on that someday! (I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up remaking some of these older videos down the road, ha.)
I love Petoskey stones! I live in West Virginia but plan on taking my family up to the UP to go rock hounding. I may need to ask you for advise on the best beaches for looking for upperlites, petoskey stones and other rocks. Michigan is blessed with cool geology and beautiful scenery!
Being in the Traverse City area, I have Petoskey and Charlevoix stones in my driveway and along the shoreline. They're interesting for sure, and we used to collect these for tumbling in a rock polisher to shine them up like the one you hold in the video. Now I just give them away to visiting friends that have never seen them before. Thanks for the video!
My parents took me to Lake Michigan to look for P. stones. They found many small ones. I, none. As we were getting out of the lake, I stepped on an 8 inch beauty. Dad had it polished for me as a Xmas gift. Fine +!!
I live on the st clair River a good few hours from Petoskey. I recently tried to do more happy, productive things in my town, realized I could look for rocks on a lil local man made beach. The amount of joy I had looking thru all that is near blew me away. I found a druzy quartz but the thing is it want buried there was zero mud on any of if. I thought that type of thing was normally found burried in Clay
How many of you know that Michigan's 'thumb', is just one of many exposed outcrops of an even larger organism or colony of Coral that stretches all the way up to, and resurfaces near Manitoulin Island, only to circle back to what's now Niagara Falls? All that nice mossy limestone you're walking on today, was once part of a coral reef.
Here in Florida(Central Florida that is) 177 feet above sea level you can go to any creek and find fossilized shark's teeth. I even found a Megalodon tooth. We also found a Smilodon tusk.
30+ years ago I found one between South Haven and Saugatuck / Douglas at the time I was puzzled, I had previously thought it to be wave action. A decade later I learned of the glaciers and now think that it more likely glacial transport. My grandparents lived in a summer trailer community in that area and you could fill a bucket with chrinoid fossils in no time. I took the kids to an Allegan county beach a few years back and we picked up a few. They were surprised when I told them how old I thought they are 400-500 million years old.
Lifetime Charlevoixan. My uncle created the (locally) famous Bicentennial Tower in 1976. It has 200 layers of polished Petoskey stones, almost 6 feet tall. It’s found in the Bob Miles exhibit at the Harsha House, a museum of the Charlevoix Historical Society. The curator is David Miles, Bob’s son and my cousin. I have many of Uncle Bob’s Petoskey stone pieces (a lamp, mushrooms, a large pen holder, magnets, etc. Exquisitely beautiful stones when cut and polished with love.
I remember going to Frankfort (mi) when i was a kid and walking out on the pier with the lighthouse and seeing a huge Petoskey stone in the water. I think it was at least 20 feet down so I wasn't even close to being able to touch it but I still thought it was cool
I am so glad I clicked on this video about what petoskey stones are!! First I watched this guy polish a giant petoskey stone and thought the exact thing you thought why!?! But then you gave me exactly what I was looking for the answers!! What a great video thank you!!
I stopped at the Quincy Mine gift shop today (5/19) on my way to Eagle Harbor and bought a Petoskey Stone. I also made reservations for my buddy and I to take the Quincy tour on Sunday at 11:15.
There should be a Petoskey stone polka for one but also I've heard the term " warm shallow sea " before. Is there an estimate to how deep the sea was say from max to min roughly?
I lived in Traverse City for 5 years. I did dock work during the spring and fall. I used to find them a lot along the shore. My boss has tons of them in his workshop.
All the great limestone quarries of Alpena and ROGERS city are corals and sea animals and plants fossilized and hence the giagitic quarries and large cement companies which I worked at for 24 years, you need to visit Alpena and Rogers city, I am in Berrien Springs but would be happy to share the geological history of those areas… take care and good job…
You rock I rock we all rock. Started picking them up about 25 years ago and I've been doing lapidary work mostly with Petoskey Stones for almost as long. Great video.
Besides being young, cute, curious and enthusiastic I'm impressed to see you drive a stick, a fading art! (My "midlife crisis car" was a 2002 Subaru WRX) You work for SciShow! And you're a native Michigander. As for fall in Northern Michigan, ditto that. It's my favorite time and place to hike and camp when I can get there from downstate.
I'd never heard of Petosky stones (which is surprising to me since I grew up collecting rocks and fossils) and I was absolutely delighted to learn about them. I really enjoyed this video, thank you!
Lyudmila Stechkin I’m so glad you got to learn a new thing! That’s awesome! And collecting rocks and fossils sounds like the best hobby. 🙂 Out of curiosity, what were some of your favorite things you found?
@@AlexisDahl I live in Southern California, just a little ways east of LA. The Mojave is just North of me and even further north is the Owens valley. There are so many neat rocks and minerals to be found up there it's almost mind boggling, not to mention lakes formed in glacial valleys and ancient petroglyphs and huge cinder cone volcanoes. It's one of my favorite places on Earth. Because of some... let's be charitable and call them q u e s t i o n a b l e actions taken by the government of Los Angeles a lot of the water in the area, including a bunch of pretty sizeable lakes, has dried up. The native people who used to live along the shores of these lakes used to fish using arrows tipped with obsidian and now that the water is gone you can walk out onto the dry lakes and just look for the glint of obsidian and find arrowheads. My granddad was an archaeologist and when my sister and I were little he used to take us out arrowhead hunting. I didn't realize until I got older how strange and wonderful that experience was and how lucky we were to get to have it. I still have a pile of worked obsidian and jasper that he left when he passed, and going out with him and picking through the dirt in the desert really instilled a wonderment for nature and history in me that's never gonna go away.
@@tender-warrior Oh, man, this was such a wonderful story. Thank you for sharing it! Those sound like really lovely memories - and such a cool thing to get to share with your family! I totally see why that would have instilled wonder for nature and history!
A Robin in Canada means spring is here . I have about 50 lbs of fossils agates , crystals , garnets , gold and a platinum nugget I found on the Fraser River. I'm so into this stuff . I love it .
Been finding these my whole life around Elk and Torch lake. Bought a house and started cleaning up the yard and went to rebuild the fire pit in the back yard. Unstacking these large rocks some 10" in diameter and a few were cracked in half. I start looking at them and holy crap some giant Petoskey stones???? Who found them and put them in a fire pit ring?
I've never spent money on one but i spend a few hours on the shore in Petoskey and now i have a huge collection of petosky stones right from their home, highly reccoment taking a stroll out there
In the Petoskey Harbor Springs area. Every time we excavated for a basement or footing to build a home, we would dig up Petoskey stones got a bucket of them somewhere
I've been watching your videos off and on for sometime on tv. I watched two Videos this evening both about lake Superior rocks. I loved the picture rocks video in Munising. Following the video I started to write a comment asking "would you do a video about Petoskey Stones"? As I , looked up Taa Daa there's a video about Petoskey Stones. 😊 Back in the 60s I went to NCMC in Petoskey and Northern Mich. U in Marquette. I love everything about P-town and the U. P. Your videos give me great pleasure being back in the best parts of Mich. and learning more about the environment I lived and studied in. I currently live on the coast of Maine and love being transported back to my home state by your enjoyable videos. From now on I'll be a "regular" watcher. Thank you for your great work. Dave the old guy { that's what my kids call me ) 🤣🤣
If you haven’t and ever get the chance go up to Rockport Quarry north of Alpina. The quarry inside Rockport is free to enter and was the best fossil hunting trip I’ve ever been on. Full chunks of the coral that makes the petoskey stones along with an embarrassment of other fossil riches. You can take up to 25 lbs of fossils a year per person out of there. Well worth a trip.
There is also a similar fossil to the Petoskey Stone, called a Charlevoix Stone. (I've lived in Michigan my entire 50+ year life and just heard it for the first time a few years ago!)
Aw, thank you! I'm really glad you enjoyed it. So much of my video-related energy goes into SciShow these days, but it was fun to take a story that wouldn't really fit on SciShow and bring it over here!
@@AlexisDahl I was so excited for you when you announced you were going to work for SciShow! It's still one of my favorite things to watch. I hope you'll keep trying to make your own videos though 😄
@@C.Schmidt Thank you very much! That's so kind. It's a great show to work on, and I'm glad you like watching it! And ha, we'll see! I'm on a bit of a Michigan geology kick, so there's a chance more stories will show up here. :)
I just discovered your videos a few days ago and subscribed. With this video I found that you are (were?) connected to Complexly whose content I have been watching for years. Good to know you!
i was just at the peninsula at traverse city yesterday. we were at one of the many secluded beaches and all of the sudden a unabashed, wise old geologist came up to me with a handful of these guys. asked me if i knew what they were, i said no, and he informed me of their history and how they're only found in a selected area. he gave me tips and i found a couple myself along the shore. very wholesome moment here, love this state.
I think the most interesting thing would be to see how the coral are layered in the rock. If they have others centered directly below them, or off set with their older layers of coral towards the center. Or maybe only the outer layer has the coral, and the center is pure rock, and a flat plain was scrapped of the seabed then curved, and formed into a rock. Have you seen any inner X-Ray, Ct Scan, Ultrasound, or other, inner views of these Petoskey rocks? The inside structure would probably be just as interesting. I like how you gave a its age, in comparison to the dinosaurs. When watching things like PBS Eons, they have timelines of ages, and eras, that are thousands, millions, or maybe billions of years old. With no markers as to how far present day is from there. There the viewer is expected to look up that era to find out if, it was before, or after the dinosaurs, or if it was closer to the beginning of life on Earth. Most people don't know how far back dinosaurs died, but at least it gives us a reference. I always liked the old school videos "Understanding the Earth" by Tuzo Wilson. I was excited to see "Kate Tectonics", by Katelyn Salem, but that series only lasted a few episodes. Another interesting show is "Nick On The Rocks" by Nick Zentner. There is also JTV, by Natalie Tjaden. Where she talks about gems, jewels, and other interesting rocks. I hoped SciSchow might do a geology series, but not even "Crash Course" has done a series on that subject yet...
Hello! Thanks for such a thoughtful comment! I don't know of any papers that have looked at the inside of Petoskey stones specifically, but now, I'm curious. I'll check it out and let you know what I find! (Also, thank you! I'm glad the dinosaur reference was helpful. I'm still in the baby stages of learning about geology, so I'm glad that wasn't just useful to me, ha.) Ooh, thanks for the recommendations! I've listened to a few episodes of Zentner's geology podcast but haven't heard of "Nick on the Rocks." And SciShow has a few cool geology episodes if you'd like to check them out! One of my favorites is this episode on pleochroism: ruclips.net/video/mOy85gMTNRw/видео.html (Also, stay tuned next month! We have a few special episodes coming that might be of interest to you!)
@@AlexisDahl Thanks Alexis, I didn't know that he also had a geology podcast. Hopefully I'll get the chance to listen to all those episodes also. I used to listen to a lot of science podcasts, "Astronomy Cast", and "Short Science" by Elizabeth Hauke, and SciByte. I always liked the more lecture style, fact filled shows, more then biographies of Galileo, or Howard Carter type things. I wanted to learn more of the science and how it was discovered, rather then just the results. I was fascinated by the CERN video about how the LEP/LHC tunnels were built and experiments installed. During the 'Faster than light Neutrinos' I was so frustrated that they never explained the experiment. I made my own video about the "CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso experiment", which I posted here on RUclips. I still occasionally watch SciShow Space, and other mini Science news shows. I did like the new Mount Olympus video you, and Stefan hosted. I'm looking forward to seeing the other two parts of your trilogy. It reminds me of "The Brain Scoop", 'Amazon Adventure' series Emily Graslie hosted. One of my favorite videos was a series of lectures given by Frank Close, as part of his Royal Institution, Christmas Lectures. Someone had pirated it to RUclips, but I later found it and all the other videos in the series on the Royal Institution website. They host all their lecture videos from 1968 thru 2019, each year they hosted a series of lectures for children around Christmas time, the early ones were 6 lectures, an hour long, on each of the 6 days. The newer ones are only 3 lectures. Each lecture series has a different host each year, and different topic. Sadly it seems that their is no geology series. I hope you find out what is inside your Petoskey stone. Thanks for the link to the color changing rocks, SciShow video. Here a link to Frank Close's 5 part Royal Institution, Christmas Lectures. * www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures/watch/1993/the-cosmic-onion Another RI Christmas Lecture, I enjoyed was "The Planets" by Carl Sagan, a 1977, 6 part lecture. A predecessor to his TV show, which came out a few years later called "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". That lecture is pretty good also, and has a lot of interesting stuff you didn't get to see in the original Cosmos show. Are there any SciShow episodes that you wrote the entire script for? I used to write a lot of short stories, and then I realized that writing them in script form was a lot easier, lol. So far I only ever posted the Beakman's World stories online for other people to read. I've written 6 of them, my stories were based on the science TV show, which in turn was based on the Sunday science comic strip, "You Can with Beakman & Jax". However, I mashed those characters together with characters from a Brazilian children's educational TV show called "Castelo Ra-Tim-Bum". My "Castelo Ra-Tim-Bum/Beakman's World" Trilogy is on Internet Archive if you ever get the chance to read it. It was fun introducing the characters to each other, and finding silly ways to get the two groups of characters to interact. Beakman is a hyper active scientist, his show came out about a year before "Bill Nye: The Science Guy". But they both ran for about the same amount of episodes, and covered a lot of the same topics. Beakman was more of a "Looney Tunes" style, while Bill's show was more family friendly, and early Disney style. I mention Bill in my last Beakman story, and the PSA that both Bill and Beakman {Paul Zaloom} appeared in, although separately, in the same video. I know your mainly the Content Manager, and Script Editor on SciShow, but you might like the stories if you can get past the script style, and enjoy the science demonstrations, and facts I included in each story. If you ever go to Brazil, 'Castelo' is one of their national treasures, they even had several museum exhibitions, and a musical about it.
We often find petoskies broken in half, exposing their cores. The polyps secreted tubes from a central point. The structures of fossil corals have been carefully studied and extensively published, there are a fair number of different species.
If you have a whole head they grow from just a couple and duplicate as they get larger what she has is most likely a broken off piece of a larger stone yes they look mostly the same all the way through some get lighter in color twards the center
I'm living in Germany on an ancient coral reef as well, also from the Devonian. Even though the corals that I find here and that I have my bookshelf filled with are mostly Tabulata corals, not Rugosa corals as in the Petoskey stones.
So if we took a bunch of dead human bodies and clumped them together at the bottom of the ocean somewhere and wait a half billion years we could end up digging out a human rock in a land that doesn't exist up here yet?
Got one just cause there weird looking back in 1980 on my first time I went up to the upper peninsula in Michigan to see what was there bunch of logging roads to travel on and lakes to fish for and camping
Not tentacles or squishy stuff, the part which is fossilised is the coralite; the calcite skeleton a polyp makes to live in, each hexagon is one of those.
"Northern Michigan, where it's winter... like two thirds of the year" lol Not quite but sometimes feels that. I grew up near Petoskey Michigan. We never thought too much about Petoskey stones, they're so prevalent we just pick them up off the beach. But we know a lot of tourists will come and buy them in gift shops.
I found one on Lake Superior in Marquette two weeks ago. Was weird. I live in the Upper Peninsula of MI. I’ve found tons of agate but never one of these.
Thank you for this video. Now I know what they are I want a petoskey stone. I began collecting rocks when I lived in South Texas. Nothing but clay and sand, no rocks. I need to make another trip to Michigan. I have a piece of copper from Copper Harbor and several pieces of granite but no petoskey stone.
I never made the scishow connection. How'd I miss that >.> I know a few places over by Sleeping Bear Dunes where you can find a few Petoskey boulders on little hidden beach of sorts
I'm probably not in the market for a Subaru, but I found a new youtube channel that seems to post occasionally. Super interesting video. Looking forward to the next one to come out in 2022 :]
Brandon Graham Thanks, Brandon! Ha, I’m hoping to make some more content soon, so hopefully you won’t have to wait THAT long. Still, I appreciate the kind words!
OK young lady, your so into this stuff, I think your really a "Geology Professor". But, hey, I can relate to that fossilized stuff, as during spring, summer, and fall months, I work at our family run excavating/dump trucking business. Almost daily, I haul, with our dump truck, out of the local "LImestone" quarry. This quarry rock, was deposited in layers. The total thickness of the layers are up to about 40 feet. To mine this limestone, first they scrape the topsoil off which amounts to about 3 to 10 feet in depth. They expose the top layer of limestone, then with a big mining drill they drill holes down to the bottom layers of limestone, up to 40 feet deep. The holes are spaced mabe on 8' squares. Then the drill holes are filled with a blasting agent, wired together, and exploded. After this the limestone is fractured in pieces ranging from mabe 6foot down to 8inch. With a big mining loader they shovel this broken limestone into a big high powered rock crusher. What comes out of the "Crusher" is a range of useable limestone material. The biggest pieces about 1 to 2 feet are used as "Rip Rap" for stream and river bank protection. Middle sized 6 inch on down to 3/4 inch is used on driveways, parking lots or roadways. A finer product almost like coarse flour, is called lime, used on farm fields to lower the soil PH. This thick deposit of limestone, is the same stuff U R talking about, probably deposited under your shallow sea bed when we were down there by the tropics, aye? Ok, because here in west central WIS, the glaciers peetered out, or stopped just to the north of us. So they never got the chance to "Bulldoze" the top layers off, like the did up by U. So in some areas, it is sort of original landscape, or undisturbed. Oh Gee, I dont mean to "Ramble On".
Oh, man! That's so exciting. Thank you for sharing! If you feel comfortable sharing, how did it go? I've passively been wondering about the idea of someday making content specifically for teachers/classrooms, so any feedback is more than welcome. 🙂
I know you're a busy lady, but I want you to know that I really enjoy your RUclips video's. It's hard to find anyone enthusiastic about anything these days, other than politics or social media. AND FURTHERMORE, don't sell yourself short - you bring a very specific type of vibrancy to all of your subjects. Keep up the good work!
You've made me want to visit Michigan, and I'm from Michigan!
Ha ha, that's how I felt when I started making these videos a few years back! 🙂
Several yrs ago I bought a load of washed gravel from a gravel pit near Evart MI. In the process of spreading the gravel around my landscaping we found several pieces of Petoskey Stones. It sure made spreading several hundred pounds of stones a lot more fun!
My best friend and I have found Petoskey stones on the shores of Manitoulin Island, the east coast of Lake Huron, and I found a huge one on a farmer's rock pile here in southern Ontario!! Thank you for the insight on these beautiful stones.
When I was a child in Michigan, my grandpa gave me a Petoskey Stone. The patterns on it made me curious and I spent some time in my 20s (when you have time for nonsense) learning about them. I'm old, now, and I have forgotten what I learned. But I still have that rock. It looks just like your, having been through a tumbler and polished up nice and pretty. Now, I have a grandchild that likes natural stuff. I think she's old enough to pass on my grandpa's Petoskey Stone.
I never realized just how interesting the state of Michigan is til I found your channel. Awesome content. Thanks.
Having spent my early childhood in Michigan and Summering there with my Dad, camping in The UP back in 1985, these videos take me back to the wonders of nature I experienced during that time of my life.
Thank you for your work! You are the first science creator my 4yo daughter has sat all the way through, and that's a huge win in my books.
1:40 That is such a Michigan gesture!
Your love of your work, truly shines through you, and I love learning about the subjects you are educating us about, because of your spirited, and enthusiastic way of sharing your knowledge. Thank you very, very much
I bought a load of 2” stone to fill in a space between my garage and house. I live in a Michigan town named Central Lake about 25 miles from Petoskey. I had an attending nurse for wound care who also was a rock and mineral collector. She picked through my rocks and got about 20 or 30 Petoskey stones. They require polishing and finishing, but the are prevalent. They also can be found on the shores of Lake Huron between Caseville, Mi, specifically Oak Point to Port Austin beaches. Not as prevalent but in the 60+ years I spend there I found a few.
I live in Petoskey! Grew up here too. My family had a business making Petoskey stone jewelry. I have such an eye for them that I could fill a 5 gallon bucket of them in a couple hours. If you ever want to revisit this subject, I can help you find them! Also we have Charlevoix stones here which is another fossilized coral🖤
Oh, man, that's amazing! Also, thank you for the offer - I might take you up on that someday! (I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up remaking some of these older videos down the road, ha.)
Do you sell Petoskey stones and if so how much?
@@josephcarroll2824 $3 to $5 a pound
It is against the law to pick up more than 25 pounds of stones on state land a year and completely forbidden on federal land. Just an fyi.
I love Petoskey stones! I live in West Virginia but plan on taking my family up to the UP to go rock hounding. I may need to ask you for advise on the best beaches for looking for upperlites, petoskey stones and other rocks. Michigan is blessed with cool geology and beautiful scenery!
Being in the Traverse City area, I have Petoskey and Charlevoix stones in my driveway and along the shoreline. They're interesting for sure, and we used to collect these for tumbling in a rock polisher to shine them up like the one you hold in the video. Now I just give them away to visiting friends that have never seen them before. Thanks for the video!
My parents took me to Lake Michigan to look for P. stones. They found many small ones. I, none. As we were getting out of the lake, I stepped on an 8 inch beauty. Dad had it polished for me as a Xmas gift. Fine +!!
Would love to see more geologic content either on your channel or SciShow.
I love the energy you bring!
I live on the st clair River a good few hours from Petoskey. I recently tried to do more happy, productive things in my town, realized I could look for rocks on a lil local man made beach. The amount of joy I had looking thru all that is near blew me away. I found a druzy quartz but the thing is it want buried there was zero mud on any of if. I thought that type of thing was normally found burried in Clay
I lived in the U P for 20 years and alexis has tough me about the area then the whole time I lived there love your channel
Thanks Alexis for explaining how/why Northern Michigan is blessed with Petoskey Stones.
How many of you know that Michigan's 'thumb', is just one of many exposed outcrops of an even larger organism or colony of Coral that stretches all the way up to, and
resurfaces near Manitoulin Island, only to circle back to what's now Niagara Falls? All that nice mossy limestone you're walking on today, was once part of a coral reef.
tell me more? How would I learn more?
Here in Florida(Central Florida that is) 177 feet above sea level you can go to any creek and find fossilized shark's teeth. I even found a Megalodon tooth. We also found a Smilodon tusk.
30+ years ago I found one between South Haven and Saugatuck / Douglas at the time I was puzzled, I had previously thought it to be wave action. A decade later I learned of the glaciers and now think that it more likely glacial transport.
My grandparents lived in a summer trailer community in that area and you could fill a bucket with chrinoid fossils in no time. I took the kids to an Allegan county beach a few years back and we picked up a few. They were surprised when I told them how old I thought they are 400-500 million years old.
Lifetime Charlevoixan. My uncle created the (locally) famous Bicentennial Tower in 1976. It has 200 layers of polished Petoskey stones, almost 6 feet tall. It’s found in the Bob Miles exhibit at the Harsha House, a museum of the Charlevoix Historical Society. The curator is David Miles, Bob’s son and my cousin. I have many of Uncle Bob’s Petoskey stone pieces (a lamp, mushrooms, a large pen holder, magnets, etc. Exquisitely beautiful stones when cut and polished with love.
Alexis: thank you for your inspirational passion and ability to see the world in a new way each and every day!
I remember going to Frankfort (mi) when i was a kid and walking out on the pier with the lighthouse and seeing a huge Petoskey stone in the water. I think it was at least 20 feet down so I wasn't even close to being able to touch it but I still thought it was cool
Love your infectious enthusiasm, hope you do more videos on rocks and geology!!!
Thanks so much! ☺️ I actually have a few more geology videos in the works, so stay tuned! 🙂
Great stuff and presentation!
I am so glad I clicked on this video about what petoskey stones are!! First I watched this guy polish a giant petoskey stone and thought the exact thing you thought why!?! But then you gave me exactly what I was looking for the answers!! What a great video thank you!!
I stopped at the Quincy Mine gift shop today (5/19) on my way to Eagle Harbor and bought a Petoskey Stone. I also made reservations for my buddy and I to take the Quincy tour on Sunday at 11:15.
I wish I could find someone that’s so passionate about my state of Minnesota like you are to Michigan.
I was born in Petoskey. Always love walking the beach looking at Petoskey stones.
We used to find Petoskeys all the time when I was a kid vacationing around Arcadia & Ministee, 50 years ago. Not so much anymore,
I love the enthusiasm you naturally bring to whatever you talk about.
Your an amazing fact giver/story teller !! I hope lots of younger folk watch you. So much learning
There should be a Petoskey stone polka for one but also I've heard the term " warm shallow sea " before. Is there an estimate to how deep the sea was say from max to min roughly?
Absolutely fantastic video, Alexis! Hope to see more great videos of yours! Aunt Kathy!
I lived in Traverse City for 5 years. I did dock work during the spring and fall. I used to find them a lot along the shore. My boss has tons of them in his workshop.
All the great limestone quarries of Alpena and ROGERS city are corals and sea animals and plants fossilized and hence the giagitic quarries and large cement companies which I worked at for 24 years, you need to visit Alpena and Rogers city, I am in Berrien Springs but would be happy to share the geological history of those areas… take care and good job…
Great video explaining the Petoskey stones.I recently found some and love them.
You rock I rock we all rock. Started picking them up about 25 years ago and I've been doing lapidary work mostly with Petoskey Stones for almost as long. Great video.
That sounds amazing! Thanks for sharing. Lapidary is something that fascinates me, and working with Petoskey stones sounds like a blast.
Besides being young, cute, curious and enthusiastic I'm impressed to see you drive a stick, a fading art! (My "midlife crisis car" was a 2002 Subaru WRX) You work for SciShow! And you're a native Michigander.
As for fall in Northern Michigan, ditto that. It's my favorite time and place to hike and camp when I can get there from downstate.
I've been finding a buttload of Petoskey and Charlevoix stones in southwest Michigan all summer. FYI Charlevoix is another town name in Michigan too
I'd never heard of Petosky stones (which is surprising to me since I grew up collecting rocks and fossils) and I was absolutely delighted to learn about them. I really enjoyed this video, thank you!
Lyudmila Stechkin I’m so glad you got to learn a new thing! That’s awesome! And collecting rocks and fossils sounds like the best hobby. 🙂 Out of curiosity, what were some of your favorite things you found?
@@AlexisDahl I live in Southern California, just a little ways east of LA. The Mojave is just North of me and even further north is the Owens valley. There are so many neat rocks and minerals to be found up there it's almost mind boggling, not to mention lakes formed in glacial valleys and ancient petroglyphs and huge cinder cone volcanoes. It's one of my favorite places on Earth.
Because of some... let's be charitable and call them q u e s t i o n a b l e actions taken by the government of Los Angeles a lot of the water in the area, including a bunch of pretty sizeable lakes, has dried up. The native people who used to live along the shores of these lakes used to fish using arrows tipped with obsidian and now that the water is gone you can walk out onto the dry lakes and just look for the glint of obsidian and find arrowheads. My granddad was an archaeologist and when my sister and I were little he used to take us out arrowhead hunting.
I didn't realize until I got older how strange and wonderful that experience was and how lucky we were to get to have it. I still have a pile of worked obsidian and jasper that he left when he passed, and going out with him and picking through the dirt in the desert really instilled a wonderment for nature and history in me that's never gonna go away.
@@tender-warrior Oh, man, this was such a wonderful story. Thank you for sharing it! Those sound like really lovely memories - and such a cool thing to get to share with your family! I totally see why that would have instilled wonder for nature and history!
A Robin in Canada means spring is here . I have about 50 lbs of fossils agates , crystals , garnets , gold and a platinum nugget I found on the Fraser River. I'm so into this stuff . I love it .
Been finding these my whole life around Elk and Torch lake. Bought a house and started cleaning up the yard and went to rebuild the fire pit in the back yard. Unstacking these large rocks some 10" in diameter and a few were cracked in half. I start looking at them and holy crap some giant Petoskey stones???? Who found them and put them in a fire pit ring?
Pretty cool!
I live in the thumb area of Michigan and found a very nice petoskey stone in my driveway :)
Those great glaciers became the great lakes!
It is fascinating, isn't it? Geology that is. I DIG ROCKS! Literally and figuratively. Silicates are my favorites.
I've never spent money on one but i spend a few hours on the shore in Petoskey and now i have a huge collection of petosky stones right from their home, highly reccoment taking a stroll out there
Oh, man, that's awesome! Congrats on finding so many of them!
In the Petoskey Harbor Springs area. Every time we excavated for a basement or footing to build a home, we would dig up Petoskey stones got a bucket of them somewhere
I've been watching your videos off and on for sometime on tv. I watched two Videos this evening both about lake Superior rocks. I loved the picture rocks video in Munising. Following the video I started to write a comment asking "would you do a video about Petoskey Stones"? As I , looked up Taa Daa there's a video about Petoskey Stones. 😊
Back in the 60s I went to NCMC in Petoskey and Northern Mich. U in Marquette. I love everything about P-town and the U. P. Your videos give me great pleasure being back in the best parts of Mich. and learning more about the environment I lived and studied in.
I currently live on the coast of Maine and love being transported back to my home state by your enjoyable videos. From now on I'll be a "regular" watcher. Thank you for your great work.
Dave the old guy { that's what my kids call me ) 🤣🤣
If you haven’t and ever get the chance go up to Rockport Quarry north of Alpina. The quarry inside Rockport is free to enter and was the best fossil hunting trip I’ve ever been on. Full chunks of the coral that makes the petoskey stones along with an embarrassment of other fossil riches. You can take up to 25 lbs of fossils a year per person out of there. Well worth a trip.
There is also a similar fossil to the Petoskey Stone, called a Charlevoix Stone. (I've lived in Michigan my entire 50+ year life and just heard it for the first time a few years ago!)
What a great video! Thanks for the enthusiasm & insight!
OH WOW! I was not expecting this video but it's super interesting! It's so amazing to see another video from you!
Aw, thank you! I'm really glad you enjoyed it. So much of my video-related energy goes into SciShow these days, but it was fun to take a story that wouldn't really fit on SciShow and bring it over here!
@@AlexisDahl I was so excited for you when you announced you were going to work for SciShow! It's still one of my favorite things to watch. I hope you'll keep trying to make your own videos though 😄
@@C.Schmidt Thank you very much! That's so kind. It's a great show to work on, and I'm glad you like watching it! And ha, we'll see! I'm on a bit of a Michigan geology kick, so there's a chance more stories will show up here. :)
"more interesting and delightful that I ever could have hoped for"
I just discovered your videos a few days ago and subscribed. With this video I found that you are (were?) connected to Complexly whose content I have been watching for years. Good to know you!
Oh wow! This is so cool! I had no clue! I live in Florida and I'm surrounded by coral reefs... This was amazing. Thanks for sharing
I learned alot i will tell my teacher we r learning about these :) tysm!!💕💕
I fall in love with those stones 😍
You mentioned the robin as the state bird. It should really be the Kirtland's Warbler!
i was just at the peninsula at traverse city yesterday. we were at one of the many secluded beaches and all of the sudden a unabashed, wise old geologist came up to me with a handful of these guys. asked me if i knew what they were, i said no, and he informed me of their history and how they're only found in a selected area. he gave me tips and i found a couple myself along the shore. very wholesome moment here, love this state.
Aw, I love it! Thanks for sharing! I love the mental image of an unabashed, wise old geologist, ha ha. :)
Thats awesome. 💚T.C. native 💚
I think the most interesting thing would be to see how the coral are layered in the rock. If they have others centered directly below them, or off set with their older layers of coral towards the center. Or maybe only the outer layer has the coral, and the center is pure rock, and a flat plain was scrapped of the seabed then curved, and formed into a rock. Have you seen any inner X-Ray, Ct Scan, Ultrasound, or other, inner views of these Petoskey rocks? The inside structure would probably be just as interesting. I like how you gave a its age, in comparison to the dinosaurs. When watching things like PBS Eons, they have timelines of ages, and eras, that are thousands, millions, or maybe billions of years old. With no markers as to how far present day is from there. There the viewer is expected to look up that era to find out if, it was before, or after the dinosaurs, or if it was closer to the beginning of life on Earth. Most people don't know how far back dinosaurs died, but at least it gives us a reference. I always liked the old school videos "Understanding the Earth" by Tuzo Wilson. I was excited to see "Kate Tectonics", by Katelyn Salem, but that series only lasted a few episodes. Another interesting show is "Nick On The Rocks" by Nick Zentner. There is also JTV, by Natalie Tjaden. Where she talks about gems, jewels, and other interesting rocks. I hoped SciSchow might do a geology series, but not even "Crash Course" has done a series on that subject yet...
Hello! Thanks for such a thoughtful comment! I don't know of any papers that have looked at the inside of Petoskey stones specifically, but now, I'm curious. I'll check it out and let you know what I find! (Also, thank you! I'm glad the dinosaur reference was helpful. I'm still in the baby stages of learning about geology, so I'm glad that wasn't just useful to me, ha.)
Ooh, thanks for the recommendations! I've listened to a few episodes of Zentner's geology podcast but haven't heard of "Nick on the Rocks."
And SciShow has a few cool geology episodes if you'd like to check them out! One of my favorites is this episode on pleochroism: ruclips.net/video/mOy85gMTNRw/видео.html (Also, stay tuned next month! We have a few special episodes coming that might be of interest to you!)
@@AlexisDahl Thanks Alexis, I didn't know that he also had a geology podcast. Hopefully I'll get the chance to listen to all those episodes also. I used to listen to a lot of science podcasts, "Astronomy Cast", and "Short Science" by Elizabeth Hauke, and SciByte. I always liked the more lecture style, fact filled shows, more then biographies of Galileo, or Howard Carter type things. I wanted to learn more of the science and how it was discovered, rather then just the results. I was fascinated by the CERN video about how the LEP/LHC tunnels were built and experiments installed. During the 'Faster than light Neutrinos' I was so frustrated that they never explained the experiment. I made my own video about the "CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso experiment", which I posted here on RUclips. I still occasionally watch SciShow Space, and other mini Science news shows. I did like the new Mount Olympus video you, and Stefan hosted. I'm looking forward to seeing the other two parts of your trilogy. It reminds me of "The Brain Scoop", 'Amazon Adventure' series Emily Graslie hosted. One of my favorite videos was a series of lectures given by Frank Close, as part of his Royal Institution, Christmas Lectures. Someone had pirated it to RUclips, but I later found it and all the other videos in the series on the Royal Institution website. They host all their lecture videos from 1968 thru 2019, each year they hosted a series of lectures for children around Christmas time, the early ones were 6 lectures, an hour long, on each of the 6 days. The newer ones are only 3 lectures. Each lecture series has a different host each year, and different topic. Sadly it seems that their is no geology series. I hope you find out what is inside your Petoskey stone. Thanks for the link to the color changing rocks, SciShow video. Here a link to Frank Close's 5 part Royal Institution, Christmas Lectures.
* www.rigb.org/christmas-lectures/watch/1993/the-cosmic-onion
Another RI Christmas Lecture, I enjoyed was "The Planets" by Carl Sagan, a 1977, 6 part lecture. A predecessor to his TV show, which came out a few years later called "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". That lecture is pretty good also, and has a lot of interesting stuff you didn't get to see in the original Cosmos show.
Are there any SciShow episodes that you wrote the entire script for? I used to write a lot of short stories, and then I realized that writing them in script form was a lot easier, lol. So far I only ever posted the Beakman's World stories online for other people to read. I've written 6 of them, my stories were based on the science TV show, which in turn was based on the Sunday science comic strip, "You Can with Beakman & Jax". However, I mashed those characters together with characters from a Brazilian children's educational TV show called "Castelo Ra-Tim-Bum". My "Castelo Ra-Tim-Bum/Beakman's World" Trilogy is on Internet Archive if you ever get the chance to read it. It was fun introducing the characters to each other, and finding silly ways to get the two groups of characters to interact. Beakman is a hyper active scientist, his show came out about a year before "Bill Nye: The Science Guy". But they both ran for about the same amount of episodes, and covered a lot of the same topics. Beakman was more of a "Looney Tunes" style, while Bill's show was more family friendly, and early Disney style. I mention Bill in my last Beakman story, and the PSA that both Bill and Beakman {Paul Zaloom} appeared in, although separately, in the same video. I know your mainly the Content Manager, and Script Editor on SciShow, but you might like the stories if you can get past the script style, and enjoy the science demonstrations, and facts I included in each story. If you ever go to Brazil, 'Castelo' is one of their national treasures, they even had several museum exhibitions, and a musical about it.
We often find petoskies broken in half, exposing their cores. The polyps secreted tubes from a central point. The structures of fossil corals have been carefully studied and extensively published, there are a fair number of different species.
If you have a whole head they grow from just a couple and duplicate as they get larger what she has is most likely a broken off piece of a larger stone yes they look mostly the same all the way through some get lighter in color twards the center
I'm living in Germany on an ancient coral reef as well, also from the Devonian. Even though the corals that I find here and that I have my bookshelf filled with are mostly Tabulata corals, not Rugosa corals as in the Petoskey stones.
So if we took a bunch of dead human bodies and clumped them together at the bottom of the ocean somewhere and wait a half billion years we could end up digging out a human rock in a land that doesn't exist up here yet?
Got one just cause there weird looking back in 1980 on my first time I went up to the upper peninsula in Michigan to see what was there bunch of logging roads to travel on and lakes to fish for and camping
Sturgeon point on Lake Huron is (or at least was) a great spot for finding those stones as well.
I can imagine that when it comes time to get a different house, the moving company is going to need heavy haulers for your favorite rocks!
Not tentacles or squishy stuff, the part which is fossilised is the coralite; the calcite skeleton a polyp makes to live in, each hexagon is one of those.
Cedar, MI checking in. Stumbled upon your channel and glad I did. Subscribed.
I grew up in traverse city. We had hundreds of those stones around our house.
"Northern Michigan, where it's winter... like two thirds of the year" lol Not quite but sometimes feels that. I grew up near Petoskey Michigan. We never thought too much about Petoskey stones, they're so prevalent we just pick them up off the beach. But we know a lot of tourists will come and buy them in gift shops.
We’re limited to picking up 25 lbs of rocks and minerals per year in Michigan, excluding national parks. Enjoy collecting!
Perfect answer to my question… ❤ Thank you!!
Well presented and very interesting video. Thankyou.
I found one on Lake Superior in Marquette two weeks ago. Was weird. I live in the Upper Peninsula of MI. I’ve found tons of agate but never one of these.
Wow!!! Thank you for the great educational video. Amazing!🤓👍
Thank you for this video. Now I know what they are I want a petoskey stone. I began collecting rocks when I lived in South Texas. Nothing but clay and sand, no rocks. I need to make another trip to Michigan. I have a piece of copper from Copper Harbor and several pieces of granite but no petoskey stone.
The tentacles were beautiful colors as well.
I found one near Charlevoix in the 70s as a kid and it's the size of a hockey puck but square.
Now I want one for my godson, how is the best way to obtain one? (for now, I cannot travel to Michigan). Saludos desde Puerto Rico.
I imagine there are multiple online shops that sell them! You might try a Michigan-based Etsy shop.
ebay
Thanks for putting MI first!
I found one Today at Bay Shore Beach in New Brunswick.
Wow, I live pretty close by so I might have to check these out
Great stuff!
Thank you so much
Love the video. Could you please do one on Charlevoix stones?
I enjoy your video productions. I really enjoy your enthusiasm ❤😂
Lake Huron is also a good source of Petosky stones
I never made the scishow connection. How'd I miss that >.>
I know a few places over by Sleeping Bear Dunes where you can find a few Petoskey boulders on little hidden beach of sorts
For me, geological time is hardest part for me to comprehend.
I live in Indiana and I find those fossils often also.
I'm probably not in the market for a Subaru, but I found a new youtube channel that seems to post occasionally. Super interesting video. Looking forward to the next one to come out in 2022 :]
Brandon Graham Thanks, Brandon! Ha, I’m hoping to make some more content soon, so hopefully you won’t have to wait THAT long. Still, I appreciate the kind words!
Wow! I was a fan & subscriber to the SciShow channels long before I stumbled across yours, but I'm making up for the lost time. LOL!
South shore of Lake Michigan is loaded with many kinds.
OK young lady, your so into this stuff, I think your really a "Geology Professor". But, hey, I can relate to that fossilized stuff, as during spring, summer, and fall months, I work at our family run excavating/dump trucking business. Almost daily, I haul, with our dump truck, out of the local "LImestone" quarry. This quarry rock, was deposited in layers. The total thickness of the layers are up to about 40 feet. To mine this limestone, first they scrape the topsoil off which amounts to about 3 to 10 feet in depth. They expose the top layer of limestone, then with a big mining drill they drill holes down to the bottom layers of limestone, up to 40 feet deep. The holes are spaced mabe on 8' squares. Then the drill holes are filled with a blasting agent, wired together, and exploded. After this the limestone is fractured in pieces ranging from mabe 6foot down to 8inch. With a big mining loader they shovel this broken limestone into a big high powered rock crusher. What comes out of the "Crusher" is a range of useable limestone material. The biggest pieces about 1 to 2 feet are used as "Rip Rap" for stream and river bank protection. Middle sized 6 inch on down to 3/4 inch is used on driveways, parking lots or roadways. A finer product almost like coarse flour, is called lime, used on farm fields to lower the soil PH. This thick deposit of limestone, is the same stuff U R talking about, probably deposited under your shallow sea bed when we were down there by the tropics, aye? Ok, because here in west central WIS, the glaciers peetered out, or stopped just to the north of us. So they never got the chance to "Bulldoze" the top layers off, like the did up by U. So in some areas, it is sort of original landscape, or undisturbed. Oh Gee, I dont mean to "Ramble On".
My mom grew up in Michigan.
What was the name of that sea?
Found I nice one about 10 by 5 by 2 inches in my yard when I was a kid. Don’t know whatever happened to it.
I showed you’re video to my 8th grade science class after one of my students brought one in 😀
Oh, man! That's so exciting. Thank you for sharing! If you feel comfortable sharing, how did it go? I've passively been wondering about the idea of someday making content specifically for teachers/classrooms, so any feedback is more than welcome. 🙂
awesome awesome video thank you