THE COSO GEODE
a mystery of the past
geode
Cut in half, the Coso geode resembled a spark plug, with a shaft of metal about .08 inch
thick encased in white ceramic.
It was thought, however, to be half a million years old.
In 1961 Wally Lane, Mike Mikesell, and Virginia Maxey, co-owners of the LM&V Rockhounds Gem
and Gift Shop in Olancha, California, went into the Coso Mountains, six miles northeast of
Olancha, to look for unusual rocks. Near the top of a 4,300-foot peak overlooking the dry bed
of Owens Lake they found a fossil-encrusted geode that proved to contain something strange.
What the geode proved to contain, after Mike Mikesell had ruined a diamond saw blade in
cutting it open, was something that would later be shown to resemble a spark plug.
In the middle of the geode was a metal core, about .08 inch (2 millimeters) in diameter.
Enclosing this was what appeared to be a ceramic collar that was itself encased in a hexagonal
sleeve carved out of wood that had, presumably at a later date, become petrified.
Around this was the outer layer of the geode, consisting of hardened clay, pebles,
bits of fossil shell and "two nonmagnetic metallic objects" resembling a nail and a washer."
A fragment of copper still remaining between the ceramic and the pertified wood suggests
that the two may once have been separated by a now decomposed copper sleeve.
X-ray photographs of the object were taken, and it was after examining these that the editor
of INFO Journal, Paul Willis, noticed a startling similarity between the Coso artifact and a
modern spark plug.
In 1963, the Coso geode was display for three months at the Eastern California Museum in
Independence. Wally Lane then seems to have taken possession of the object and in 1969 was
reportedly offering it for sale for $25,000.
According to the estimate of a geologist unnamed in the original report of the find, the age
of the geode based on the fossils it contains is some 500,000 years.
note.....the geode has been a source of argument lately as to whether or not it is a 1920''s sparkplug or whether it is factual.......so ill leave it up till a definative answer has been announced
