This week I have a real mystery object for you, which came in as an enquiry from the bottom of a mine in Ireland that was flooded to the roof with freshwater. It’s earned itself the delightful name of the ‘Clonkeen snot’ thanks to its appearance and texture:
If you click on the image, it will open a large version so you can have a really good look at the fascinating gunk that was fished from the subterranean dankness.
Any ideas what this might be?
As always you can leave your questions, thoughts and suggestions in the comments section below. Have fun!
Zygoma 
Brought up how long ago? Size? Any sign of structure if taken out of the container? Has it ever been DNA tested? Preservative used?
That’s it for questions. Will try guesses soon.
Brought up less than 1 week ago. Taken out of the container it turns to goop (hence the snot name). It’s not been tested (and I doubt it will be). It’s preseved in 70% Industrial Methylated Spirit (which just ethanol cut with 5% methanol so it can’t be consumed).
Not sure if that helps much, but I have dissected some of this stuff and I found something very interesting, which I will post photos of as the guesses start coming in 🙂
My first and only guess for now is some sort of slime mould (acrasiomyce…. or some such?) in their coming-together-to-reproduce phase. So strictly speaking not plant, animal or fungus.
Second guess: pork crackling that spilled out of some miner’s lunch that got soaked underfoot.
I would be quite interested to learn the origin of your online name. 🙂
Living in France as I do, the first thing that popped into my head was “tripe”, then “French onion soup”. Since neither would be found in the bottom of a flooded mine, I am pretty sure those are wrong. Doing some snooping, I found that the Clonkeen mines in Ireland were mainly for quartz. Don’t know if that’s important to the mystery though!
it looks similar to the putrified cartilaginous/protein sludge at the bottom of my skull soaking vats after a bath of hydrogen peroxide…. yuck. any odor?
Freshwater, so uni is out of the question…but I’m still thinking someone’s reproductive product…or a human thumb. The latter would be more interesting honestly.
The latter is the closest so far – but it’s not very close…
https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.jsLooks like frankincense resin in water. I’d guess some sort of organic seepage from the surrounding rocks. What was mined there?