Albertite

[3] It was from a mixture of albertite and pitch that kerosene was first distilled in 1846 by Abraham Gesner,[4] a New Brunswick geologist who had heard stories of rocks that burned in the area and gave the material its first scientific study.

Albertite is formed from oil shale in which some of the hydrocarbons have been remobilised as liquid asphalt.

There, the albertite occurs as discordant, cross-cutting veins in the core of an anticline.

Most geologists of the 1800s were puzzled by how this "coal" came to be discordant to the local strata, as they did not understand the nature of its oil shale source rock, or the fact that the albertite was essentially solidified asphaltum.

[citation needed] Extraterrestrial albertite has also been detected on the dwarf planet Ceres.