Nature
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An egg-laying rockface in the misty mountains of China sounds like some old mythological legend. But, lo and behold, this geological phenomenon does actually occur, albeit with egg-shaped rocks and not actual eggs.
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Every so often, about once every 30 years, the 6-meter (19 foot 8 inch) high cliff appears to “shed” an egg and it falls to the floor. The eggs are no more than 20 to 40 centimeters (8 to 16 inches) in diameter. According to the locals, there are other smaller "stone eggs" nearby.
So what could explain the strange cliff? Scientists who have been to the site are divided, although the main consensus is that it has something to do with erosion and different hardnesses of rock.
The cliff is made of a common type of calcareous rock that was formed about 500 million years ago in the Cambrian period. The eggs, on the other hand, are concretions made of tougher, heavier sediment deposits. This means that the cliff face tends to erode away quicker than the eggs during prolonged rainfall or sudden landslides. The roundness of the “eggs” is likely due to running water, however it isn’t clear how or why so many became embedded in the rocks.
You can find these round rocks popping out of cliff faces elsewhere in the world, such as in Colorado (image above), although it isn’t known whether the egg-shaped rocks also fall to the ground as they do in this small Chinese village.
