Abstract

Author:
Robert G. Bednarik, translated by Jing Che, Bo Xiao

Doi: 10.7508/jra.01.2023.79.87

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

This paper first briefly reviews a classification of geological and biological rock markings. It then examines the nature of a previously baffling geological phenomenon in western Victoria, found so far at four sites. The clustered groups of circular rock markings have been defined as Aboriginal petroglyphs by both archaeological and geological review-ers. They are ‘cannonballs’ — spherical inclusions in the sandstone that became sectioned by unloading events, and they are attributable to inherent diagenic features of the rock. The circle ‘petroglyphs’ are, in fact, reaction fronts where carbon derived from decaying animal tissue caused the spherically expanding precipitation of CaCO3 before the final lithification of the sandstone. The paper then reports several examples of misidentification of rock markings in recent years that led to the discoveries of geological processes, such as compressive-tensile rock marking, kinetic tree root marking and kinetic energy metamorphosis. In such cases, it was through their connection with rock art rather than basic geological research that under-standings of these effects were secured.
文章首先简要回顾了地质学和生物学上的岩石痕迹分类。然后考察了迄今为止在维多利亚西部四处地点中发现的令人困惑的地质现象及其性质。成组聚集的环状岩石痕迹被考古学家和地质学家判定为土著岩刻画。它们是被卸荷作用分割开来的“石蛋”——砂岩中的球形夹杂物，其形成可归因于岩石固有的成岩特征。事实上，这种圆形“岩刻画”是砂岩在最终锂化成岩之前内含的腐烂动物组织中的碳经过化学反应所形成的碳酸钙球形膨胀沉淀物。文章随后介绍了近年来对岩石痕迹进行错误识别的一些案例，这些案例导致了若干地质过程的发现，如压缩-拉伸岩石痕迹，植物动力痕迹以及动能形变。在这些案例中，对这些岩石痕迹的错误理解产生于将上述痕迹与岩画相联系，而非对其本身进行基础性的地质学研究。

KEYWORDS:
自然岩石痕迹，石蛋，压缩-拉伸痕迹，根系痕迹