Large rocks found in treetops, how did they get there?

So nobody had ever seen this phenomenon until “a few years ago” and suddenly they find three of them? Unless the area has seen a major surge in human activity recently, I think this is an indication that it may be a prank.

Freakin’ glaciers must be rampant in my shoe rack.

Yes it does. It depends on the type of tree, naturally.

Millions of years is certainly relevant. By your argument humans can’t achieve anything that takes greater than 100 years, as few humans survive past 1 century. The entire process relies on trees relatively short lifespan.

etc… etc…

But thanks for the demolition job. I was only floating it as a hypothesis. It sounds every bit as unlikely to me.

Human action is probably most likely, and more precisely the humans that first reported it.

Remember how everyone thought that crop circles were created by UFOs because how ‘perfect’ they were and how it was ‘impossible’ for mere humans to create?

Well, it’s been shown humans can rather easily create crop circles and the perpertrators have confessed and recorded on camera how they did it.

All you need is for four college guys to recreate putting a boulder in a tree with block and tackle. With practice, they could probably do it in half an hour.

No mystery here, move along.

(WRT the theory that a growing tree lifted it: How the hell does a one foot sapling begin to lift a 200 lb. rock? :rolleyes: )

Peace.

Prank. Without a doubt. I love the weight estimates “thought to weigh at least 400 pounds”, so nobody knows? That’s similar to the system used by local news in estimating narcotics value “local teen jailed with a ‘joint’, estimated street vale is $400”.

Funny though.

Remember the urban legend about the diver being found in the tree because the he got caught in the bucket of water used to fight the forest fire? Well if not, here ya go http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/scuba.htm

Maybe it was a rock instead of a scuba diver!

OK, yes, I agree, this theory sucks.

OK, I thought about it and figured it out. It is a Boy Scout physics merrit badge project (or something simular). The scout master had tree climbing skills and would attach a block and tackle which could easilly cut the weight of the rock by 1/6th or more and is light enought and compact enought to hike in.

This was done many years ago and long forgotten, back then there was not as much respect for the enviroment as today.
That’s my take on it.

It is an Oyster Tree. You can easily figure the age of this rare tree by how large its “rock” is. As this tree grows it takes impurities, sends them up a channel build into its trunk, and wraps it in layers of a mud mixture. This mud mixture dries, and due to unique properties, is very resiliant.

This is clearly a very old Oyster Tree.

Now that I have given it more thought, the answer is obvious. Some claim aliens while others claim a college prank but no one realized the truth, aliens performing a college prank. Some bug eyed fraternity boys from Alpha Centauri flew over while drinking a keg and decided to play games on us. If you were drunk and zooming around the galaxy, what would you rather do for fun, talk to some stuffy world leader or freak the backwoods people out? This also explains the anal probes and deer on power poles. My god, I need to call NASA…

The picture on this site does far more justice to the spectacle:

http://abduct.com/taylor/lt58.htm :eek:

I am wondering if somebody could have hauled it up there using some manner of rope trickery. I am also unsure whether it is even a rock at all.

I agree with the others who see parallels with crop circles.

damn teenagers

oughta be a law…(indistinct muttering)

You’ve seen their work, now play the game.

Black helicopters

Black helicopters with a sling underneath, probably piloted by some weekend warriors from a nearby national guard unit, IMHO

Bah 0 was justa scout group being taught how to use pulley

The original article states that the ground in the area is littered with boulders. Boulders don’t grow from the ground. They do however, fall from inclines. It’s a sandstone boulder and sandstone is very susceptible to erosion. If there are lots of boulders on the ground, chances are, they fell from the surrounding hillsides. From the original article: “It (the tree) sits high on a south-facing slope overlooking a ravine …”.

As for the rock’s positioning, any other positioning would be illogical - the boulder would simply break off weaker branches and fall to the ground. This tree managed to “catch” a boulder in a spot where the branches could bear the weight. Voila! Rock in tree.

“It (the tree) sits high on a south-facing slope overlooking a ravine …”.

You quoted it yourself. It sits high over a ravine, not low in a ravine, not under a south-facing slope. It’s above the surrounding terrain. Boulders don’t fall up. That’s the whole point. One reply linked an article/picture that shows the surroundings more clearly

Nothing personal. You’re not the first person in this thread to suggest this. I’m just surprised at how people are reversing the meaning.

Even if the boulders did fall down a slope (which, if you google for pictures of these things, you’ll see that there’s no nearby slope or hill in sight), boulders generally don’t leap high in the air. The slow motion foam boulders in movies bounce. Real bouldes tend to stay close the ground rolling and sliding rather than skipping.

And even if a boulder were to gain the height needed to fall into the arms of a tree twenty feet up, it would most likely be travelling at a good clip.

Traveling at a good clip X the mass of a one ton boulder = smashed tree.

Just because trees seem immovable to you, doesn’t mean that a high wind or a falling boulder can’t take 'em out.

They were placed there. By yahoos.

Peace.

I believe I have the answer.

Gobbler’s Rock (400 lbs), the original find sitting 80 feet high in a chestnut tree was probably the result of logging road blasting long ago. I’m assuming the area is no longer actively logged, and that the memory of this common occurance in active logging areas has lapsed or that the retired loggers have not been consulted. Note that the directions to Gobbler’s Rock involve a “logging path”. Many years ago, I blasted out roads in the bush, and I was made aware of the dangers to loggers either cutting into embedded rock chips or less commonly dislodging rocks from upper limbs. BTW, the chestnut tree being a slow growing hardwood tells me that the limbs would have been strong enough to support the rock and impact 30 years ago with enough time to erase signs of damage.
With regard to the other two boulders, I find the circunstances somewhat phony or contrived.

  1. two boulders in two trees about a 100 yards apart in a 23,000 acre forest.

  2. both boulders about 200 lbs, within the range capability of a drunken male engineering student.

Quoth kp:

Just be glad, youngster, that I wasn’t drinking anything when I read this, or I’d be sending you the bill.

See the definitive paper “Rock, Paper Scissors: A Preemptive Strike By Pulpwood”. It explains the whole thing.