Right, because a dinosaur-aged machine is much more reasonable than a piece off of some modern mining equipment broken off during processing.
Goody, I just saw this on ATS and was wondering if it would make it here. To start with, they've thrown in several previous similar finds, so we need to straighten out which one the article is talking about. That would be the second and third pictures down. The others have been addressed before.
That established, the first question we should ask is where did the coal come from? An underground mine, a strip mine or reclaimed salvage, like mudlarks used to do with bits of coal lost in the Thames during offloading? The item wasn't found until the consumer had got ahold of it so the coal could've come from anywhere and the item imbedded at any step of way who knows when. A strip mine for instance makes a huge difference as that's all surface mining.
The specimen itself may be questionable in that while most of it has the characteristic glassy sheen of solid coal, the area immediately around the contact point with the imbedded metal appears almost powdery and unconsolidated. The corrosion apparent on the object is meaningless, as aluminum is known to weather rather quickly when exposed to mercury, which destroys it's protective oxide layer. The fact that the inner surface appears almost undamaged suggests it wasn't sitting in any bog for millions of years waiting for coalification to set in.
Edited by Oniomancer, 21 January 2013 - 05:31 PM.
"Apparently the Lemurians drank Schlitz." - Intrepid "Real People" reporter on finding a mysterious artifact in the depths of Mount Shasta.