geoledgy

[geoledgy]

Fluorite, Red Cloud Fluorite Mine, New Mexico, photo by Tiny Minerals

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Dippin Dots? Nope! This is just the most candy looking Grape Agate i have ever seen! Excellent druzy, multi colored and minimal damage.

Photo Natalis Gems

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Finally made official refs for TB and Mona!

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when i die i hope i come back as a beautiful microscopic granule of sand

[geoledgy]

Finally made official refs for TB and Mona!

[geoledgy]

Finally made official refs for TB and Mona!

[geoledgy]

Finally made official refs for TB and Mona!

[geoledgy]

Fossil Friday: Copper Replacement

This is petrified wood but it has not been replaced by silica like it usually would be. It has been carbonized and replaced by copper minerals. It comes from  the Nacimiento Mining District, Sandoval County, New Mexico, USA. (Incidentally, I used to live in this county when I was a child. Beautiful deserts out there).

The copper minerals came about because the environment of deposition created oxygen-reduction in a river system (lots of rotting wood and buried plant material). This caused mineral precipitation when copper-bearing water flowed through the permeable sands.

Copper minerals found in the wood at this site include malachite,

azurite,

and chrysocolla.

It is rare for fossils to be replaced with non-silica or calcite minerals but every now and then the conditions are just right to allow that to happen.

Now you know about one more way to fossilize something. Tune in Monday to learn how to find copper in the wild. Fossilize you later!

[geoledgy]

Finally made official refs for TB and Mona!

[geoledgy]

Finally made official refs for TB and Mona!

[geoledgy]

Finally made official refs for TB and Mona!

[geoledgy]

Something neurodivergent is happening to me

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“oh, I live in a desert and-”

“wow that must be so terrible” “deserts are so ugly” “I would never want to live in a wasteland like that” “it’s just empty nothingness”

wishing 10,000 exploding hammers upon you

behold New Mexico

[ID 1: tall, snowcapped rocky mountains rising above a plain filled with desert scrub

ID 2: brightly colored banded cliff walls of several mesas climbing their way into mountains

ID 3: a desert prairie

ID 4: colorful hoodoos against a twilight sky

ID 5: white sand dunes as far as the eye can see

ID 6: a collection of hoodoos against a stormy sky at sunset

ID 7: a juniper tree standing with a cliff wall in the background

ID 8: several juniper trees on a rocky landscape]

[geoledgy]

2024: The bizarre but spectacular Icelandic waterfall that is Brúarfoss, found about 10 min drive southwest of Geysir.

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Zebra Schist outcrop, Kangaroo Island, South Australia.

[geoledgy]

Made a blue sky account. It's kinda grown on me...

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this is my son ben, short for benthic sediment