Wednesday, October 7, 2026
They Buried
We Dug It Up
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PX-2125
PUBLISHED — PEER-REVIEWED
INVENTED FOR A FICTIONAL NEWSPAPER

X-radiographs of seventeen oriented cores taken from a submerged carbonate formation, Bahamas, 1977, with the 1979 radiocarbon report

Origin
A geological survey; a university radiocarbon laboratory
Dated
cores 1977; radiographs published subsequently; radiocarbon report 1979
Extent
radiographs 17 plates; report 9 pages
Status
accepted
Redactions
None. The bracketed note is ours and is marked as ours.

Chain of custody

Obtained from the published literature, where the plates have been reproduced for decades. This newspaper added one thing: we gave the plates to a sedimentologist who had never worked on the site, told her only that they were cores from a shallow carbonate platform, and asked what she saw. Her report was written before she was told what the site was, and is published with this story alongside the fee we paid her.

Held by: They Buried, document room; the blind report held with the plates

Excerpt

Cores are oriented — each marked for north before extraction.

Cross-bedding visible in all seventeen. Dip direction consistent across the
suite, seaward.

Radiocarbon, whole rock / shell / cement: c. 2,780 ± 70 to 3,510 ± 70 BP.

[A block that formed in place keeps the dip of the beach that made it. A block
that was cut and set down keeps whatever dip it was given. Seventeen agreeing
is not a scatter.]

Transcribed by the data desk. Line breaks follow the original. Bracketed matter is ours.

Editor's note

Filed as the vault's clearest example of a question that outsides cannot answer and insides can. Fifty years of argument about the shape of the blocks; seventeen marked cores settle where the stone was when it hardened. What they do not settle — whether anybody later used the formation — is a separate and better question that nobody is funding.

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