Nature has given us many wonderful and amazing things. It’s always mysterious. Even a small grass sometimes makes us wonder. Other than that there are also some creatures which are very rare, ans is also gift of nature.
We all have seen stones, bigger and heaveir stones, but have you ever seen a stone that grows, moves and reproduces. Yes, you might be surprised, but there is a stone in romania, which people believe moves, reproduces and grows. That is Trovants.
Trovants are rare bulbous, budging boulders and are only found in a small town in Romania called Costesti. So fantastical are these trovants that they’ve found a place in local folklore. Some say they grow, walk and even give birth to baby trovants. Science says they’re probably right.
Trovants are spherical and slightly irregular-shaped rocks. They can be as small as less than an inch, or a couple of millimeters, in diameter and weigh only a few grams, or they can soar up to 15 feet high and weigh several tonnes.
These odd, gravity-defying boulders have baffled observers since the 18th Century with many a curious soul suspecting they were dinosaur eggs, plant fossils or even alien pods. Scientists believed trovants to be a type of concretion — a mound of mineral matter embedded within rock layers of limestone, sandstone or shale. They often form from minerals precipitating, or settling, out of water collected around a nucleus of pebble, leaf, shell, bone or fossil.
The International Geological Congress in Oslo claimed trovants were incorrectly classified as concretions because there was no mineral difference between the stones and the sandstone beds on which they sat. Whatever they are, scientists believe that based on their makeup and locale atop the sands, these weird stones are older than man shaped by earthquakes around 5.3 million years ago. When trovants absorb the rain’s minerals, the minerals come in contact with the chemicals already present in the stone, causing a pressure reaction that makes the rocks grow in girth. This same phenomenon is what causes trovants multiply or “reproduce,” as some might say.
When a new growth bauble emerges, likely from water affecting only one side of the rock, and gets big enough, it can break off from the “parent” rock and create baby trovants. Trovants are almost exclusively found in Romania’s Valcea County at the sand quarry near the Costesti village, along the Gresarea Brook, or in the neighbouring Otesani Village. To protect these unusual geological specimens, the “Muzeul Trovantilor” or Trovants Museum Natural Reserve, was developed in Valcea County, Romania, in 2004, and is now protected by UNESCO.