Lapidaryforum.net
Let's Rock => Rough and Slabs => Topic started by: Kaljaia on November 05, 2016, 05:03:20 PM
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Have been out of town for a bit on a training trip (I have now seen the inside of a conference room in Colorado Springs. Someday I'll find out what's outside, but was a quick trip.)
Walked the dog up a creek to shake the dust off and found this stuff. I'm leery of anything that looks like it'll fluff up and get breathed in, so I didn't bring any of it back, but I'll go back with a closed container and get some for closer inspection. It looks like it would be a great tube/moss agate, but someone forgot the agate. Tube stuff is the outside, and the fine crystals were on the inner faces of some bits I broke off. It looks like they've weathered off the exposed faces. Has anyone seen stuff like this/know if there should be precautions taken for handling it? It isn't fluffy like Asbestos but soft enough for concern.
(https://68.media.tumblr.com/750eb0bbb999282094ceee58da28827f/tumblr_og714nxNna1spns93o2_1280.jpg)
(https://68.media.tumblr.com/f80298288ce5d6e0f85481c2c407ceed/tumblr_og714nxNna1spns93o4_1280.jpg)
Also found this, which is just odd-looking
(https://68.media.tumblr.com/9ca763391704e4d4c9f5f89cfbded966/tumblr_og714nxNna1spns93o3_1280.jpg)
And this, which is actually that color (what is it??)
(https://68.media.tumblr.com/438125c0e590e6993483264858d910db/tumblr_og714nxNna1spns93o1_1280.jpg)
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Hard to tell what the sprays on the first pic might be. 2nd has the look like I found when collecting Moss Agate in Horse Canyon, The filament Moss would develop that tube like pattern around all the small filaments that make up the Moss Agate. 3rd looks like Sagenite, Aragonite needles that have been coated over time with another material like Calcite. It has the radiating spray and looks like sections have eroded away.
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My guesses...
Picture two could be fossilized mastodon or mammoth teeth. They can fossilize sometimes in rather bizarre ways.
Picture three looks like some kind of copper minerals infiltrating the agate, perhaps chrysocolla. I see green flecks in there in the matrix, so I'm assuming malachite as well. Nice display piece if nothing else.
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The blue and black piece is from a copper containing breccia pipe( angular fragments give it away). Hide it or someone could try to claim the place it came from because the land owner never owns the mineral rights. A tiny non economic deposit can still cause trespass issues and legal problems. You don't have to worry about asbestiform things there. Your first picture does not look like zeolites but zeolites do fool people into thinking they have asbestos in them . Washington basalts are famous for their massive zeolite formations and I am sure there are some in the less rhyolitic volcanic rocks down your way. I think you have already gotten good advice.
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Thanks all for the great information! I'll poke around the tube material some more. The third picture isn't mammoth teeth (though I thought of that too when I first saw it) and came from a vein of mixed crystal/mineral deposits.
The blue and black piece is from a copper containing breccia pipe( angular fragments give it away). Hide it or someone could try to claim the place it came from because the land owner never owns the mineral rights. A tiny non economic deposit can still cause trespass issues and legal problems. You don't have to worry about asbestiform things there. Your first picture does not look like zeolites but zeolites do fool people into thinking they have asbestos in them . Washington basalts are famous for their massive zeolite formations and I am sure there are some in the less rhyolitic volcanic rocks down your way. I think you have already gotten good advice.
Thanks for the note on claims and such. It's from private property but not in an area that has been mined. It's from a creek bed wash and the country it came out of is steep and very poor footing, but geologically very interesting, many exposed layers of basalt, tuff, mud flow and more. Big piece of petrified wood from the same creek bed, so somewhere it cuts through a fossil-bearing layer too. I hiked to the top of the wash but didn't see where the wood came from or find any better pieces of the copper brecca in the creek bed. The canyon walls are too steep and soft for me to mess with alone. Lots of big heulandite crystals up there as well.