Living stones found in Romania: they grow and 'give birth' to baby stones

Mysterious "living stones" in Romania grow by 5 cm every 1000 years. They grow in much the same way as plant tissue, and they "give birth" to new stones, just like animals, reports Dailymail.

Photo: IStock

These stones look like something alien. But the "living" rocks of Romania, known as "trovantes", really belong to this Earth - and they were naturally formed as a result of geological processes.

Starting as pebbles and growing by about 5 cm per millennium, the stones are unique mineral structures that mimic the life of plants and mammals. Trovants are found in a small Romanian village called Costesti, about 80 km west of the capital Bucharest.

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They look like inflated bubbles made of stone and vary greatly in size: some are up to 60 cm in diameter, others are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

“Trovants from Romania have very different ages,” said Dr. Mircea Tiklinu from the Geological Institute of Romania.

“Trovants don’t just appear out of the ground. They are present in masses of sand of different geological ages reaching natural outcrops or in sand quarries,” he added.

The word "trovant" is synonymous with the German term Sandsteinkonkretionen, which means "cemented sand".

“The word trovant was first used in the geological literature of Romania,” said Dr. Tiklinu.

Visitors to Costesti can walk along a large number of round and ellipsoidal stones that grow slowly over time thanks to rainwater. They mainly consist of a hard stone core surrounded by sand forming a shell.

The minerals in the rainwater react, which creates pressure inside, which causes the rock to grow and multiply.

Like the rings that form the girth of a tree, trovants, when cut, expose layers, each of which represents a period of growth.

Although they are not alive in the scientific sense, they are described as "alive" by locals and tourists due to the way they change over time.

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Costesti is not the only place where trovants are found. The study, co-authored with Dr. Tiklinu, describes their location throughout the Carpathian region of Romania. However, those in Costesti are well known and have a large diameter. They are spherical and ovoid, but many of them have double complex shapes.

One of the features of Costesti trovants is the presence of numerous "microtrovants" (smaller, spherical tubercles) on the surface of large ones.

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“In addition to the large trovants, there are many smaller ones that are imperfect, but with a clear tendency to be spherical,” the study says. “All these trovants occur in yellow, fine, medium or coarse sands that also contain fine gravel.”

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