Pyrite Sun

Originally these formations were thought to have been called miners dollars. This name was said to have been given by the miners that found them and associated them to silver dollars which were common in the early 1900’s. Hense the name “miner dollar”. Another name given is pyrite dollar since it’s made of pyrite and shaped like a silver dollar or sand dollar. People have called them suns because, when properly cleaned they look gold and reflectively shine, resembling the sun. Other names like pyrite floaters have been used because these things are found floating indepently in slate (shale). The name most have agreed upon is pyrite sun since they are made of pyrite and resemble suns. Some have called them pyrite fossils because they are fossils that have been replaced with pyrite. Mistakenly they have been referred to as mascrites, concreation, or a nodule due to the chemical compound, but in fact they are not any of these.  When broken they consist of two large, flat, a slightly convex disc with a thin plate of black shale separating them with a short crystalline columnar structure perpendicular to the surface of the disc. They are actually Pseudomorphs, likely a fossil totally replaced with pyrite, making the end product stronger, filled with completely different elements, but maintaining their original shape. So the true answer to the official name, as to this date, is Pyrite Sun and they are believed to be a pseudomorph. They have been reported to be over 300 million years old.