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What Are These Stones ?


Osh

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The light colored crystals appear to be mostly quartz and some calcite which can both form in a near volcanic rocks.

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Looks like ore. The black botyroidal/melty looking stuff could be psilomelane, a manganese ore. But it could be a number of different things too, you'd have to do some basic tests to find out.

Psilomelane can actually make some really cool specimens. I've run into it a few times and grabbed some chunks for my display case but everything I have is in boxes right now in storage. 

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It does looks very similar to Psilomelane pictures.  I have so many of them in different sizes and unique cool shapes. Thanks for the info. I will do some more research.

In some of the other crystal stones i was surprised to find small black shiny crystals next to the others
like in this pic. Is this a common thing to see? 🙂

ACC84A5C-6120-4D0A-9DEA-54565B1FFBCF.jpeg

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Crystals like that can be a number of things - it can be one mineral coating another, it can be one mineral cast into a shape by a now missing 2nd surrounding mineral, or it can be the actual crystalline form of a specific mineral.

What I would do first is determine if you have quartz or calcite by trying to scratch the clear/white bits them with a common nail on your sample. Determining if these samples are primarily evaporite in origin or something more igneous will eliminate some potential candidates.

Again, various ore type minerals come to mind at first - tetrahedrite, magnetite, etc. But I don't know and you'll have to research/test unless someone here recognizes something. 

I would try to find some data on specific crystalline angles by mineral (or just browse through minerals with triangluar form/cross section for a rougher idea). It's beyond what I know by memory so I'd have to google it, but at that point, you might as well google it instead and learn how to ID stuff for the future too. :smile:

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