Rare two billion year old giant boulder found in Drenthe
A crane operator found a massive boulder that is almost 2 billion years old in Nooitgedacht in Drenthe. Such ancient boulders have been found in Drenthe in the past, but rarely one this big, RTV Drenthe reports.
Crane operator Rijk Joling found the massive rock while excavating soil for a new home. “It was in the way, so I started to dig it free,” he told the broadcaster. “And it just kept getting bigger and bigger.”
Jolling excavated two by three meters of soil, and the shape of the boulder was still not fully visible. He tried to get the stone loose with his crane, but the machine could barely move the massive rock. It turned out to weigh somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 kilograms.
The boulder is nebulitic migmatite, a type of rock that formed dozens of kilometers underground under colossal pressure, stone expert Harry Huisman of the Dolmen Center in Borger said to the broadcaster. According to him, the boulder still looks much the same as it did 2 billion years ago when it broke off a mountain that no longer exists. At about 2 billion years old, it is almost half the age of our planet.
“This stone originated in Sweden or Finland from a collision of continents,” Huisman said. “The boulder ended up in our country almost without contact with the subsoil. As a result, the stone is not round as you see with many other stones found in Drenthe.”
The municipality of Aa en Hunze is currently considering what to do with the boulder. Alderman Ivo Berghuis thinks it deserves a spot in the neighborhood where it was found. “We will need a crane for that in any case,” he laughed to the broadcaster.
