04/22/2011 05:37 PM
Ancient Rock Found On Staten Island By: Amanda Farinacci
You'd hardly know it from looking at it, but a vacant land alongside Forest Avenue in Graniteville has lots in common with South Africa. It's the only place in the world besides South Africa where a 200 million-year-old rock is known to protrude from the surface of the Earth “It's called trondjemite, it's a metamorphic rock,” said Mark Blazejeski of Mariners Harbor Civic Association. “Two hundred million years ago, a piece of bedrock broke off, probably shale, and was submerged in molten igneous rock rising from below, in what must have been a tremendous earthquake.” Geologists believe a glacier scrubbed and polished the rock for a thousand centuries and that similar rock exists in other places, but you can't see it, like you can here. A professor from the College of Staten Island discovered the rock some thirty years ago. Unknowing vandals have since spray painted it, littered around it and used the lot as a dumping ground. Last Year, the Parks Department took control of the land. It will eventually open as a so-called "passing park" that won't have much more than sitting benches and paths for pedestrians to "pass through.”
Page 76 of 174