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Name : Trovants Museum Natural Reserve ( Muzeul Trovanților )

Location : Central Romania

A photo of the Trovants, bulbous stones emerging from the earth

Trovants are rocks that grow by absorbing minerals from rainwater. A nature reserve in Romania is home to a cluster of trovants that inspired folklore of dinosaur eggs, plant fossils and alien creations.

Coordinates:45.13750834249952 , 24.068854793846057

Why it ’s unbelievable : The reserve holds rocks that develop and bourgeon smaller " baby " rocks

Near a village in central Romania sits a cluster of John Rock that can spring up and reproduce as though they were living . These unusual rocks , known as trovants , at the same time push out several " babies " that can cast off and mushroom on their own .

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Trovants are found almost exclusively in Romania , specifically near the settlement of Costești , where they are protected by the Trovants Museum Natural Reserve . rarified geological and mineral condition that exist in primal Romania ( as well as in small part of Russia , Turkey and the U.S. ) are involve to form trovants , which are made of a hard stone core surrounded by a sandstone casing , according to the geology websiteGeology In .

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Trovants get by about 2 inches ( 5 centimeter ) every 1,000 days by sum to their sandstone casing , which is composed of chunks of rock cement together with limestone . The shell is so poriferous , it can absorb minerals like atomic number 20 carbonate from rainwater . The plate then act like a cement mixer , merge minerals with water to bring forth a subject matter that oozes from the rocks and adds to their circumference .

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As a outcome of how they raise , trovants are often bulbous and fluent . ball can seem on live trovants if rain systematically hits or drip onto one side of the rock music , and these lumps may , over thousands of eld , give rise to babe trovants . The weight of a infant trovant may cause it to give away off from its parent rock , meaning trovants can procreate .

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Trovants come up in all shapes and size , range from a few inches to several feet across .

Geologists think trovants first originated in earthquakes more than 5 million years ago , according toBBC Science Focus . seismal shocks may have compacted arenaceous sediments from an ancient aquatic environment into global rocks . This bloodline theory is bolstered by bivalve and gastropod fogey that researchers sometimes find inside Romania ’s trovants , according to the online powder magazine .

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The rock ‘n’ roll have exalt fantastical explanations , too . Romanian folklore abounds with tales of the beginning of trovants , including a myth that the rock are giant dinosaur eggs . Another wild theory suggest trovants are plant life fossils , while others have proposed exotic involvement , both of which , of course , are not dead on target .

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