Moeraki boulders#

with kind permission of AirPano

These enigmatic huge boulders of the right spherical form with the diameter from 1 up to 2 meters are located on the Eastern Coast of New Zealand, on the shore of the Pacific Ocean, in the place named Moeraki.

Under certain circumstances they have more than surrealistic view. Look at them:

New Zealand 2006

New Zealand's inhabitants have different unscientific theories concerning the origin of these boulders.

One of them tells that they are fossil dinosaurs' eggs. The version of aliens' landing, who laid the eggs but couldn't sustain the severe Earth climate, is popular too. According to the legends of Polynesian people Maori, the boulders are baskets with food and pumpkins with water washed ashore from the wreck of an Arai Te Uru, a large sailing canoe. But real things were another :)

Approximately 60 million years ago an ichthyosaurus, swimming along the shores of present New Zealand, relieved itself (taking in consideration boulders' dimension, it "sent a big sausage" :) directly to the seaside of the warm Pacific Ocean. This mass sank into marine mud and was covered with sand of land swell. During million years this mass was a core and a subject to the processes of thickening, cementation, concretion and minerals' crystallization. Let the geologists correct my story.

About 15 million years ago in Miocene period the seabed uplifted higher than the sea level and erosion forces began their work to form a new landscape. As a result, early formed solid spherical formations were washed off from the subsoil and now lie across the beach of the contemporaneous Pacific Ocean in New Zealand. It's curious, that somewhere these boulders have just appeared from the depth of the abrupt coast.

Here it is a free paraphrase of the book with pictures which I bought for $5 right there, near the round 2meter boulders.



2 Panoramas of Moeraki boulders