When deposited into fine layered mud, such evidence includes an impact depression beneath the dropstone, and indication that the mud has been squeezed up around the edges of the falling rock. Subsequent deposits of mud drape over the dropstone and its crater. Glacial dropstones, involving rocks falling out of icebergs, are one of the most common types of dropstone preserved in the geological record, particularly when deposited in low-energy deep sea or lake environments. Dropstones differ from erratics found in glacial till in that they are deposited in a lake or marine environments.
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There are karst formations in the limestone areas. The caves "Na Pomezí", rich in dropstone decoration and historically valuable caves "Na Špičáku" are also opened for tourists.
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The train makes a stop in Dropstone, a town celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of its founding. As they enjoy the celebration, Layton and Luke learn that the town's founder, Sophia, also had an interest in the Elysian Box, but she died the year before, and her granddaughter Katia continues to seek it out. Don Paolo, Layton's arch-rival, kidnaps Flora and disguises himself as her, leaving her behind in Dropstone as the train departs. En route to Folsense, Layton, Luke, and "Flora" are knocked out with sleeping gas by the train's conductor.
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Meteorites landing in marine depositional environments are a fifth category of dropstone. A number of meteorites have been found in Sweden's Thorsberg quarry, where they sank to the bottom of a shallow sea and were entombed in limestone 470 million years ago.
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Chalks of Maastrichtian age, Eocene nearshore conglomerates and Miocene muds and sands have also been recovered. A granite rock has been dredged as well; it may be a dropstone from icebergs and such exotic rocks have been found in other dredge samples.
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The Cobb Valley is also the location of "Trilobite Rock" a glacial dropstone made from the moulted exoskeletons of trilobites. Asbestos was mined in the Cobb Valley from the Takaka Terrene between the late 1880s and 1917. The Takaka Terrane is highly deformed and has been intruded by many batholiths.
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A dropstone of quartzite in layered rhythmite at Itu, Brazil Dropstones are isolated fragments of rock found within finer-grained water-deposited sedimentary rocks. They range in size from small pebbles to boulders. The critical distinguishing feature is that there is evidence that they were not transported by normal water currents, but rather dropped in vertically through the water column.
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Luke opens the special compartment and reveals that Sophia had gotten the box and left her own note to Anton, stating her love for him and Katia's relationship to her. Anton welcomes Katia with open arms, wanting to love her as much as he had Sophia, stating that he has to get to know Katia before he can join Sophia in death. The group returns to Dropstone, where Flora is located. As Layton and his friends return to London, they learn that Dr. Schrader had only fallen into a temporary coma from his exposure to the gas from the box, and has now fully recovered.
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This was proven to have been taken by Don Paolo, earlier at the start of the game, before Dr. Schrader was found. The two of them, later joined by Flora, go to the towns of Dropstone and Folsense, eventually finding the true purpose of the Elysian Box and reuniting a long-broken family. Finally, in Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, which wraps up the original trilogy, Layton and Luke attend a demonstration of a 'time machine', a failed experiment that leads to the disappearance of both the lead scientist Dimitri Allen and the prime minister, Bill Hawks. Ten years prior, Allen was responsible for the accidental death of Layton's fiancé Claire, who worked as the scientist's lab assistant.
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Everyone makes it out in time before the building falls into the mine, caving in the exposed mine shaft in the basement. Layton explains that when the mine was discovered fifty years ago, it released a hallucinatory gas that affected everyone in Folsense; as the gas disperses, Anton is revealed to be an old man, and Folsense an abandoned, desolate town. Layton suspects a quantity of the gas was in the Elysian Box, causing those that believed in the myth to actually succumb to death. Anton is suddenly reminded of his fiancée, Sophia, and that he has commissioned the box to hold a message to be sent to Sophia in Dropstone after her departure, but it had been stolen so many times he had lost hope Sophia received it.
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High CO2 could not have been a main driver for warming because levels would have needed to be 30 to 100 times greater than pre-industrial levels and produced substantial ocean acidification to prevent ice formation, which also did not occur. Mesoproterozoic CO2 levels may have been comparable to those of the Phanerozoic eon, perhaps 7 to 10 times higher than modern levels. The first record of ice from this time period was reported in 2020 from the 1 Ga Scottish Diabaig Formation in the Torridon Group, where dropstone formations were likely formed by debris from ice rafting; the area, then situated between 35–50°S, was a (possibly upland) lake which is thought to have frozen over in the winter and melted in the summer, rafting occurring in the spring melt. A higher abundance of other greenhouse gases, namely methane produced by prokaryotes, may have compensated for the low CO2 levels; a largely ice-free world may have been achieved with a methane concentration of 140 parts per million (ppm).
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