Rock Ball, Torish

We were, of course, curious about the science of these balls, which litter the landscape for a strip of a few hundred metres. The shell fossils everywhere attest that almost the entire region was once the floor of the ocean. At that time, molten lava from an underwater volcanic eruption was broken in to blobs which were rolled around on the seabed as they cooled and hardened.

Apparently, here at Torish, west Kazakhstan, is one of only two places where this is known to have happened.

Eggs, toirtoises, muffins - these were the descriptors we used when pointing the different rocks out to each other. Only a small number were this spherical, but these "giant's marbles" were the most engaging.

Most were cracked, and many were split into parts. Millennia of freezing and heating taking its toll. Some showed layers, like rings on a tree. Others peeled a "shell" off, like a boiled egg.