Dragon Scale Stone! Newly Discovered!
Dragon scales is a trade name for iron nodules with polygonal patterning found in the Hell Creek formation of North Dakota. These stones form alongside of Dinosaur Fossils from the Cretaceous era that include powerful animals such as the Tyrannosaurus Rex & Triceratops. Often times they are found lying right up against these extinct giants. They are primarily iron oxides with a siderite core and a limonite skin colored darker by manganese oxides. When trying to decipher the metaphysical properties of a new stone, we look at similar historical uses, energy signatures, and the experiences of those first working with it.
Although they form alongside fossils, they are not fossils. Concretions and nodules often resemble shells, scales, or bony plates and are commonly confused with them. These body parts are all used by animals for protection. Traditionally iron rich rocks were given qualities culturally associated with the masculine like security, confidence, and vitality because of the metal's connection to tool and weapon making.
Historically people believed that the meanings of stones were encoded on them symbolically. Many of the dragon scales are covered by a polygonal patterning with an eye like center. Eyes usually signify warding away negativity and both spiritual and psychic development.
The iron nodules form individually and in beds between layers of sediment. The polygons inside are revealed when the outer skin around them bursts forth exposing this unique natural pattern. While the signatures for spiritual protection are
more obvious, individuals who tested the dragon scales expressed similar themes around revealing connections. Their experiences ranged from modulating their sensitivity, changing how they were connecting energetically to the world around them, to an awareness of damage in the energy body from inappropriate connections with other people
North Dakota Geological Survey
Concretions and Nodules in North Dakota
Siderite or "ironstone" nodules are heavy, dark brownish black nodules that occur as small isolated spheres, through complex rounded forms, to thin beds tens of feet long. They often form an erosion-resistant armor on badland slopes, where their black color contrasts sharply with the gray, clayey, eroded sediments out of which they weather. Siderite nodules are typically found in lignitic bentonitic, sediments and are often concentrated along certain horizons. They are especially common in the Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation.
Siderite nodules in the Hell Creek Formation. These dark colored, heavy, iron-carbonate nodules often form an erosion-resistant armor on badlands slopes. Photo by Ed Murphy.
Siderite (from the Greek sideros, meaning iron) is an iron carbonate and an important ore of iron in many parts of the world. (Though common, siderite nodules are too widely spread in North Dakota to be valuable as ore.) Siderite rarely exists in its pure state as FeCO3, but rather forms a solid solution series with rhodochrosite (a black-weathering, brilliant pink manganese carbonate, MnCO3) and magnesite (a normally chalk-like magnesium carbonate, MgCO3). That is, siderite, rhodochrosite, and magnesite are the pure end members and intermediate forms exist. To a lesser extent, calcium and cobalt can also substitute for the iron in siderite, further complicating the chemistry of sideritic minerals. The black color of most siderite nodules in North Dakota probably comes from partial substitution of manganese for iron.
The outer rind of siderite nodules is often weathered to dark brown limonite, a "catch-all" name for relatively soft, complex mixtures of iron oxides and hydroxides. Underneath the weathered rind, nodules are dark purplish black in color, probably due to increased manganese content. Most nodules are characterized by a pattern of polygonal ridges, sometimes with raised welts at the center of each polygon, aptly described as "alligator skin".
Abundant field evidence - including truncated but otherwise undisturbed bedding around the nodules, and soft sediment deformation -indicates that the nodules formed contemporaneously with sedimentation (Frye, 1967), not later as in the case of the sandstone "logs" discussed above. The nodules probably formed at the bottoms of shallow ponds or lagoons, perhaps as a gel. In some cases, minor wave action rolled the gel, thus incorporating sand and fossil fragments or even breaking the gel into pieces now preserved as a sideritic conglomerate. The source of the iron may simply have been the abundant clay itself. Surface films of iron oxides are common on clay particles. If these particles are deposited in a reducing (oxygen-poor) environment, the iron may return to solution and be deposited as siderite.
