Fact check: Northern Ireland’s Giant’s Causeway is NOT the fossilized skin of a giant armadillo – it’s volcanic rock

Is the spot known as Giant’s Causeway on the coast of Northern Ireland actually a giant fossilized armadillo, visible from the air? No, that’s not true: The unusual geometric rock formations you see at Giant’s Causeway are basalt columns, which experts say get their shape from the way molten volcanic basaltic lava shrinks as it cools. Some stone surfaces resemble the texture of an armadillo’s skin, but no credible source says they are the preserved remains of a huge animal. The person making this claim about Giant’s Causeway on Facebook indicates that it is for entertainment.

The claim appeared in a reel (archived here) on Facebook, posted by Tyler Hansen @TheFittestFlatEarther on May 14, 2024. The post was captioned with these hashtags:

What exactly is the #giantscauseway? #Giants #armadillo

This is what the message looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:

(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Friday May 17 14:02:46 2024 UTC)

At the beginning of the video, Hansen says that regular viewers of his channel know that he believes “that everything we walk on was once a living thing.” In the final seconds of this 1:30 minute film, Hansen gives a disclaimer, but it ends abruptly:

But as always, guys, you know I’m just here to entertain, and this is just a total coincidence that…

Thirty-five seconds into the reel, after pointing out the similarities between an armadillo’s skin and the texture of the Giant’s Causeway stones, Hansen cuts to a satellite image of Giant’s Causeway and zooms in on a portion of the coastline that resembles the silhouette of an armadillo. On the scroll, this land feature is contrasted with an image of a real armadillo in a similar pose (pictured above).

Lead Stories used Google Earth Pro to measure this coastline feature. It is about 160 meters long from top to bottom – that’s about 96 times the length of the longest known armadillo (1.67 metres), which lives in the Amazon, not Northern Ireland, according to the Britannica Encyclopedia.

Lead Stories could find no evidence that the armadillo, a heat-loving South American native also found in the United States, ever lived in the humid British Isles.

Giant’s Causeway is a UNESCO World Heritage Site of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, owned and managed by the United Kingdom National Trust. The eighth selection criterion in the UNESCO description of the site explains how this 50 to 60 million year old lava formation appeared. There is no mention of a fossilized armadillo:

Criterion (viii): The geological activity of the Tertiary period is clearly illustrated by the sequence of lava flows and interbasaltic strata visible on the Causeway Coast. Interpretation of the succession has allowed detailed analysis of Tertiary events in the North Atlantic. The extremely regular columnar joint of the Tholeiitic basalts is a spectacular feature displayed in exemplary fashion on the Giant’s Causeway. The Causeway itself is a unique formation and a superlative horizontal section through columnar basaltic lavas.

A U.S. National Park Service website page on Columnar Jointing provides additional information on how basalt columns are actually formed. It says:

The predominantly hexagonal pattern arises because contraction stress is most efficiently relieved by three fractures that intersect at an angle of 120 degrees, creating six-sided polygons. Columns are oriented perpendicular to the main cooling surfaces of lava flows and other igneous bodies.

Columnar joints form after a lava flow or other igneous body has solidified, but while it is still at a high to medium temperature. It is thought that columnar joints form during rapid cooling and that the development of the fracture system allows fluids to circulate, which can further accelerate cooling.

Basalt columns are not unique to Giant’s Causeway. They can be found all over the world: Giant’s Boot, Giant’s Organ, Chimney Stacks and Giant’s Harp for example.

A September 16, 2020 travel article on Fodors.com titled “10 Jaw-Dropping Basalt Formations Around the World” shows photos of columnar formations in Iceland, Scotland, Armenia, Vietnam, Namibia, Tasmania, El Salvador, Mauritius, the United States States and Northern Ireland. They each have visual quirks, which the article attributes not to armadillos, but to geology.

An example of these non-armadillo-like features can be seen at the Devil’s Postpile National Monument in California, where the tops of the basalt columns resemble hexagonal paving stones (photo below left). This is just a hint of the vertical columnar structure beneath the surface or visible in a cliff wall (bottom right).

(Source: Wikipedia Creative Commons (here and here) downloaded on Friday May 17 21:24:55 2024 UTC)

In addition to the giant armadillo claim, Hansen’s film contains several additional, intermingled false claims that are beyond the scope of this fact check. Lead Stories has debunked such claims in the past: most notably the giant animal landforms, the ice wall, and the firmament. Additional fact checks from Lead Stories of claims about basalt columns and a flat Earth can be found here and here.