One of the most common frustrations we have as rock collectors is identifying the cool rocks we find. It’s fun to discover a cool-looking rock and add it to your collection, but it can often be difficult to know exactly what it is you’ve found. I have found that there aren’t a lot of great …
Mineral habits are the various forms that minerals take in rocks. Discover several forms of mineral habits including bladed, fibrous and reniform habits.
Here is the ultimate list of the top rock collecting sites in the US! Included is info on what you'll find and many other tips for each location.
Geology - rocks and minerals
Common opal colors lack the glittering, multicolored opalescence of its precious counterpart, but it is a beautiful gemstone with its own unique qualities.
Halite, better known as salt, is so commonplace it's easy to forget halite is a collectible mineral with its perfectly formed, sharp-edged cubic crystals.
Over 80 different varieties of colorful tumbled stones from around the world. These beautiful polished stones work great in jewelry, crafts, collections, decor, New Age projects and more!
Online Mineral Museum Photographic Archive No. 25981: Quartz var. Jasp-Agate from near Price, Carbon County, Utah.
Lunaite - lunar breccia (North West Africa 8586 Meteorite, 650 grams). (Maine Mineral & Gem Museum collection, Bethel, Maine, USA) This Moon rock, NWA 8586, was found in 2014 in Mauritania in northwestern Africa. It has been classified as a "lunar feldspathic fragmental breccia", which is a poor lithologic label. For starters, all breccias have fragments, so "fragmental breccia" is an uninformative, unnecessary, and redundant term. Secondly, the dominant clast type in this rock is not feldspar - it's anorthosite, a coarsely-crystalline textured, intrusive igneous rock dominated by the mineral anorthite (= calcic plagioclase feldspar). The anorthosite clasts are made of feldspar, but that's a mineral name, not a lithologic name. A better term for this rock is a simple "lunar breccia". Some clasts in NWA 8586 are composed of basalt, derived from lunar maria (lowlands). The dominant clast type - the light colored anorthosite (see above photo) - comes from the lunar highlands. --------------------------- More info. on NWA 8586: www.lpi.usra.edu/meteor/metbull.php?sea=Northwest+Africa+...
3 Places to Find Geodes in Northern California Northern California may not be famous for its geodes, but there are some rewarding areas to search. For the most part, you’ll be finding quartz geodes, but
Hunting Herkimer diamonds can be addictive. For Ed Halleran of Herkimer, New York, it certainly was life-changing. Over decades, he's amassed a huge collection.
Northern California has a surprising amount of different minerals hidden among the mountains, forests, and beaches. Here's some of the rocks and minerals that can be found in Northern California.
Chuck Norris's cousin, Vic Norris, digs hidden kimberlite under grassy vegetation anomaly discovered by the WGS in the Iron Mountain kimberlite district in Wyoming. Kimberlite is very difficult to recognize. It is basically a potassic peridotite and comes in a variety of colors and textures. Most notable is green kimberlite due to abundant serpentinized olivine. It typically erupts from a feeder dike complex at depth and rises to a pipe-like structure known as a diatreme and blows out at the surface like a canon under great pressure. Hypabyssal facies kimberlites samples fro the Iron Mountain district, Wyoming. Note the large, rounded mineral grains - these are hematite -serpentine pseudomorphs after olivine. This type of kimberlite forms in dikes and at the 'blow' of the the kimberlite pipe. Hypabyssal facies kimberlite, Masontown, Pennsylvania. This kimberlite dike is enclosed by black shale. Almost looks like basalt, but this is a sample of Ison Creek kimberlite I collected in Kentucky, known as basaltic kimberlite. Snap Lake hypabyssal facies kimberlite, Fort Smith, Canada. Diamond-bearing diatreme facies kimberlite breccia from Lake Ellen, UP, Michigan. You probably would never have guessed this to be kimberlite. This bleached, tuffaceous, crater facies kimberlite from the Iron Mountain district, Wyoming has some pyrope garnet and picroilmenite and looks more like scoria than kimberlite IG3 Kimberlite from Iron Mountain. Another tuffaceous kimberlite. The Ferris 2 kimberlite from Wyoming. Large fractured chromian diopside (chrome diopside gemstone) megacryst in Sloan 2 kimberlite from Colorado. Gemstones like this are typically not recovered from diamond mines even though they are as beautiful as any emerald. Kimberlite from the Victor pipe in Canada.
Discover the top mistakes made during agate hunting, including ignoring local geology, overlooking safety gear, and neglecting to clean finds properly.
Back to Minerals of Ontatio View a slide show of minerals common to Northern Ontario and below that, read about the geologic history of the area.
The San Antonio area is rich in naturally occurring gemstones and there are dozens of prospective rockhounding locations you can explore.
Gabbro is a dense, coarse-grained igneous rock that forms deep beneath the Earth's surface as slow-cooling magma solidifies. It shares the same composition as basalt but cools slowly enough for its minerals to grow large
Michiganders far and wide have heard of the legendary Lake Superior agate, but what exactly are they? And what is all this you’re hearing about cold water agates? The answers may surprise you!
Geologisches Portrait/Konkretionen und Knollen - Mineralienatlas Encyclopedia
