DID YOU KNOW...

            Did you know that it takes about 1 million years for deep sea manganese nodules to attain a size of 8-10cm?  These nodules are formed on the deep Pacific Ocean floor just south of Hawaii.  Under specific conditions the bacterial colonies (which form the thin outer skin) are able to precipitate manganese and other metals (mostly cobalt, nickel, and copper) into a rounded, globular mass about the size of a dinner roll.  Although they are largely metallic nodules they are also fossils of bacterial colonies much as stromatolites are fosssils of blue-green algae colonies.

Robert Sensenstein