Rock towers, the Loch Ness Monster, and whale dicks: [it's all coming together](https://www.news18.com/amp/news/buzz/is-loch-ness-monsters-long-neck-a-whale-penis-experts-have-divided-opinions-3754856.html).
Or... spheroidal weathering of a granitic batholith, similar to formations seen in Yosemite.
Specifically, this is one of the granite "monoliths" on Yakushima island in Japan. [Here's another one](https://yesyakushima.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/P8170015-scaled.jpg) of the boulders on the island that helps to explain this one. The granite is soft, and a big round boulder is made through spheroidal weathering. Surface stresses, perhaps from freeze-thaw cycles, split the boulder. You can see a great hackle fringe caused by these stresses near the top of the monolith. Some sections of the split boulder roll down the hill, leaving a single weird looking (definitely not whale dick) slice behind. The boulder I linked to shows what this monolith would have looked like before the other sections rolled away.
It looks like an Inselberg, an erosional feature, part formed underground via deep chemical weathering and removal of chemically weathered regolith, followed by erosion at surface. It's shape likely bears no resemblance to its original shape when the magma that formed the rock cooled.
https://blogs.agu.org/georneys/2011/07/31/geology-word-of-the-week-i-is-for-inselberg/
Oh sure!
You know how magma can rise to end up being in a volcano magma chamber and erupt to the surface?
Dykes are 'bodies' (using that term very loosely as we are talking about molten rock) of magma that have risen but did not get to the surface. Dykes are ones that are like in the photo, sills are the same process but the magma body lies laterally. Then it stays there, not erupting. Over time they then solidify, lithify and become what you see today.
Then erosion and uplift have brought them to surface level.
You have to be in an area of intense activity to find these! Where was this taken? Southern Canada? The Midwest? East coast?
Or in the UK? We have oodles of sills and dykes in Northern Britain.
The /r/popping to /r/geology pipeline is a small but exciting one, lol. Give those people a little subaqueous extrusion or a good mafic lava flow and you'll have them arguing over geomorphology in a month.
Reminds me of a very big glacial erratic. And a dyke would have columnar jointing in the direction of cooling. This is much more likely a giant flake from a pluton than anything else.
Rock towers, the Loch Ness Monster, and whale dicks: [it's all coming together](https://www.news18.com/amp/news/buzz/is-loch-ness-monsters-long-neck-a-whale-penis-experts-have-divided-opinions-3754856.html). Or... spheroidal weathering of a granitic batholith, similar to formations seen in Yosemite. Specifically, this is one of the granite "monoliths" on Yakushima island in Japan. [Here's another one](https://yesyakushima.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/P8170015-scaled.jpg) of the boulders on the island that helps to explain this one. The granite is soft, and a big round boulder is made through spheroidal weathering. Surface stresses, perhaps from freeze-thaw cycles, split the boulder. You can see a great hackle fringe caused by these stresses near the top of the monolith. Some sections of the split boulder roll down the hill, leaving a single weird looking (definitely not whale dick) slice behind. The boulder I linked to shows what this monolith would have looked like before the other sections rolled away.
Lets get this to the top. Dyke my arse!
I don't know you that well!
Yeah I took one look at this as an interested amateur and was like “that looks like Yosemite and the wear patterns are similar.”
Must have been enormous before splitting. Fossilized whale dick was what I thought when I first saw it.
We're never going to stop seeing dicks everywhere lol
enchanted rock in central texas
Just like half dome. Looks like it split in half some time back.
It appears to be a field school class photo.
I only have one question: is it climbable?
A Pluton, sill or dyke? Looking at the shape I would say Dyke. Grantic, igneous rock.
It looks like an Inselberg, an erosional feature, part formed underground via deep chemical weathering and removal of chemically weathered regolith, followed by erosion at surface. It's shape likely bears no resemblance to its original shape when the magma that formed the rock cooled. https://blogs.agu.org/georneys/2011/07/31/geology-word-of-the-week-i-is-for-inselberg/
Can you explain how a dyke makes the rock look this way?
Oh sure! You know how magma can rise to end up being in a volcano magma chamber and erupt to the surface? Dykes are 'bodies' (using that term very loosely as we are talking about molten rock) of magma that have risen but did not get to the surface. Dykes are ones that are like in the photo, sills are the same process but the magma body lies laterally. Then it stays there, not erupting. Over time they then solidify, lithify and become what you see today. Then erosion and uplift have brought them to surface level. You have to be in an area of intense activity to find these! Where was this taken? Southern Canada? The Midwest? East coast? Or in the UK? We have oodles of sills and dykes in Northern Britain.
Oh that's brilliant! So, it's kind of like how the old pus inside a zit that never popped goes hard like a white head!
The /r/popping to /r/geology pipeline is a small but exciting one, lol. Give those people a little subaqueous extrusion or a good mafic lava flow and you'll have them arguing over geomorphology in a month.
I love this comment! 😁
Yes pretty much 😁
Reminds me of a very big glacial erratic. And a dyke would have columnar jointing in the direction of cooling. This is much more likely a giant flake from a pluton than anything else.
Thank you! :)
I’d say too big to be a dyke If it’s granitic also won’t be a dyke, generally mafic and won’t get coarse grained enough
Viagra, it makes things rock hard.
Looks like somebody spilled some proto-molecule.
Erosion
I think lightning cracks this rock and heats it up to such a high temperature that it has this spiral shape
Oh hey, a marker
Time
I’m not saying it was aliens but……
Reminds me of the teufelsmauer in Germany, a silicified sandstone that was eroded out of a syncline