Many thanks to Stephen Mayer for writing this collecting trip note for the August WCGMC newsletter and also for allowing me to post it my blog.
By Stephen Mayer
Tammy and I are back from a vacation in the desert southwest. Naturally, we took some time between visits to National Parks to do a little fossil and mineral collecting in Utah. The setting and geology are quite different than in western New York.
Very thick shale and calcareous mudstones are widespread in Millard County, west-central Utah and contain some of the best Cambrian biotas in the world. Not only are there 505-520 million year old fossils abundant, but also recent volcanism in the same region has left its mark with abundant rocks and minerals. Specifically, well preserved trilobites and beautiful topaz crystals can be collected.
Admittedly, some of the Wayne County Gem and Mineral Club collecting trips are out of this world. However, that’s figurative speech as we have not yet actually figured out how to visit any true planetary bodies. No, Cobalt, Ontario does not count, not even Sudbury. But suppose we could travel to another planet to collect. What might we find? Let’s consider Mercury for starters.
When I ventured to New Hampshire and Maine with three other intrepid collectors in search of aquamarine, topaz, smoky quartz, and other pegmatite riches, we did not pass by the planet Mercury (see posting of June 30, 2016). However, we did find an interesting spot to collect a little graphite. The site is in extreme eastern New York between the northern end of Lake George and the southern end of Lake Champlain. Along Pulpit Road, one half mile east of Route 22 in Putnam, NY, a large pile of boulders lay just 50 feet off the roadside. Bob, Linda, and Gary provide scale to the boulders in the cover photo.
Rubies are red, very red. Rubies are hard, very hard. In fact with a hardness of 9 on the Moh’s scale, they fall just below diamonds as the hardest natural mineral on earth. Ruby is also the birthstone for July, the seventh month in the Gregorian calendar.
All of us who live or travel in Wayne County in western New York State know it is easier to travel north-south than east-west. Most of us know that is due to the elongated hills called drumlins that cover much of the region. And we also know that those geomorphological features were formed by the continental glaciation that covered western New York with ice a mile thick until their final retreat 12,000 years ago.
BUT, did you know that until very recently, glacial geologists could not agree on exactly how these elongated parallel hills came into existence. It was known that the drumlin fields were aligned with the glacial flow and retreat, but it was unclear whether they represent debris built up progressively during glacial advance and retreat or whether they were sculpted out of older sediment from previous glacial deposits. The debate has raged for over 150 years.
It is not quite fair to the rest of us, but folks with a birthday in June get a choice of two major birthstones. Pearl is the original modern gemstone for the month, officially named as such in 1912 by the National Association of Jewelers. However, alexandrite has been since added as a June gem.
BOOK REVIEW: New York Rocks and Minerals: A Field Guide to the Empire State, by Dan and Bob Lynch (2016)
There is a new publication available entitled “New York Rocks and Minerals: A Guide to the Empire State”. It is authored by Dan and Bob Lynch and published by Adventure Publications of Cambridge, MN. The 2016 book is available online for less than $20 on Amazon.
For each of 105 rocks, minerals, and fossils found in New York State this book provides a page of pictures designed to illustrate the specimen’s most characteristic identifying traits and an opposing page providing information on environment, what to look for to identify it, size, color, occurrence, and a notes section with other pertinent information. The format and presentation is very easy to use. In addition, beginners should enjoy the several page overview of New York geology. The 14 page “Quick Identification Guide” based on color and then expanding into other properties may be just the ticket for some.
The end of April was an active and exciting period for Wayne County Gem and Mineral Club diggers with two trips, each of three days duration. While we wait for warmer weather to our north, the club ventured to the neighboring states to our south, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
It seems we have been here before! The May gemstone is a repeat of the mineral beryl. Yes, emeralds are a different color than the March gemstone aquamarine, but mineralogically a beryl is a beryl is a beryl.
The striking green color of an emerald is caused by the introduction of just 0.1-0-5 percent chromium substituting into the aluminum spot of the beryllium silicate mineral. A small amount of vanadium is also present. It is truly amazing that just a fraction of a percentage of an element can impart such a striking difference in color. While the richness and intensity in color is paramount in valuing an emerald, the presence of visible inclusions is also important. Emeralds lacking inclusions to the eye are considered flawless and carry more value than those with visible inclusions.
It was not that long ago that Wayne County and the rest of western New York were located just south of the equator while basking in tropical temperatures. A large and shallow inland sea dominated the region with high mountains to the east and a shallow continental margin to the west. The sea was replete with life. Invertebrates dominated the sea bottom, corals and brachiopods filtered nutrients from the seawater to survive, while trilobites, cephalopods (squid), and a host of other scavenger and predator species roamed the benthic (sea bottom) region feeding on them. Numerous species of gastropods (snails) and bivalves (clams) were abundant also. The seas above were dominated by large armored fish (i.e. Dunkleosteus) and a multitude of smaller fish. It was the Devonian Period of earth’s history. It was the age of fish.
It happened in a flash. At our April Friday club meeting, trip leader Bill Chapman announced that we had been granted permission to enter Seneca Stone Quarry on the upcoming Monday and wondered who might be free and interested. Seneca Falls is quite close and apparently we either have a lot of idle folk in the club or a lot of anxious collectors ready to get busy. Eleven folks indicated interest and in a slight mist all eleven converged on the quarry site just south of Seneca Falls ready to collect on Monday morning April 11th.
If you have yet to visit the Wayne County Gem and Mineral Club workshop in Wolcott during one of the club’s monthly Saturday events, then you are missing out on the opportunity your club membership provides you to saw, slab, grind, and polish rocks into cabochons, spheres, or whatever geometric (or non-geometric) design you wish. Not to mention the camaraderie provided when 10-15 or more rock hounds come together to partake in such activity. But there is even more you are missing. Each month we convene it seems that our Workshop Coordinator, Glenn Weiler, has managed to introduce something new and creative to the shop. Continue reading Creativity at the WCGMC Workshop→
Diamonds are found in very unusual magmatic intrusive bodies called kimberlites or in alluvial deposits resulting from the weathering and erosion of kimberlites and the concentration of the hard and resistant gems in placer deposits. Kimberlites are pipe-shaped igneous intrusions that erupted from great depth. With high gaseous and volatile content, they were able to fracture and penetrate the very thick continental crust, often encapsulating blocks of the fractured host rock as they ascended. (Kirkley et. al.,1991). Their pipe-like morphology is evident in the picture of the kimberlite pipe quarry from Kimberly, South Africa pictured in the header of this article.
A Maximum Card (often referred to as a maxicard) is a philatelic postcard with a postage stamp placed on the picture side of the card. The stamp and card match or in some way relate to each other. Maxicards are officially released by many of the world’s postal services, but they are also generated personally by individuals combining a stamp issue with a simple souvenir postcard. In most cases, the cancellation is also related to the image on the front of the card and the stamp.
As a collector of minerals, mining and geology on stamps South Africa’s 1984 four-stamp set commemorating some of the country’s strategic resources was a fine add to my collection. It was not until a couple of years ago, however, that I learned that the officially released Maximum Cards S10-S13 for these stamps featured geologic maps. Not only would this satisfy another of my topical interests (maps on stamps), but as a retired geologist I found the inclusion of geologic maps on the “Maxicards” most interesting. Thanks to a tip provided by a fellow member of The CartoPhilatelic Society on the club’s shared discussion site, I was able to purchase a complete set via an online source.
Now it seemed only fitting that I research the stamps and maps a bit. This note will be constructed to accommodate both Philagems and The New CartoPhilatelist, newsletter of the Maps on Stamps Study Units, as the cards are equally collectible for members of both ATA study units.
The mineral beryl is hard and can sparkle with exceptional clarity and wondrous color when free of inclusions and defects, clearly justifying its lofty gemstone status. In fact, not just one gemstone, but several depending on the color imparted by trace amounts of iron, chromium, manganese and other transition elements substituting into the crystal lattice. Aquamarine, emerald, morganite, and heliodor are all gemstones of the mineral beryl. But it is sky blue variety that has our special attention this month as aquamarine is the March birthstone.
co-authored with Stephen Mayer for the March 2016 Wayne County Gem and Mineral Club newsletter
As geologists and amateur fossil and rock hounds, many of us focus on the Proterozoic minerals of the Adirondacks and/or the Paleozoic fossils of western and central New York State. However, two very important and much overlooked prehistoric animals roamed New York State approximately 10,000 years ago. The Woolly Mammoth and the American Mastodon were prominent residents in our own backyards.
Quartz is simple. Right? Just a silicon (Si) atom nestled in the center of a tetrahedral form surrounded by four oxygen atoms. Build them together, let the silica-centered tetrahedral motifs share oxygen atoms and bingo we have SiO2. Quartz crystals grow from this. They grow into beautiful clear, milky or smoky trigonal crystals with six-sided prisms terminating in six-sided pyramids, simple as a childhood erector set or a Lincoln Log cabin (with that distinctive green roof). Herkimer diamonds are our favorites, but amethyst and citrine colors are nice too.
OK, but now we are told that quartz which grows rapidly or under “special” conditions can be cryptocrystalline, a condition that exists when the individual quartz crystals are too small to see even with an optical microscope. And this apparently changes everything. No longer are we collectors satisfied to apply the common mineral name, albeit with a few modifiers for color (amethyst, citrine, rose quartz).
Everyone likes the color purple and mineral collectors like shiny crystal surfaces and perfect terminations. Therefore, is it any wonder that amethyst attracts attention? Whether it is spotted in a 2” miniature specimen off matrix, filling a small geode, or covering a huge Brazilian crystal cathedral, eyes are always drawn to the splendor exhibited by a fine amethyst piece. Given its appeal, is it any surprise that amethyst is the February birthstone?
When most of us think of quartz in New York State we think of Herkimers. Yes, that is quartz and they are very nice. But last summer WCGMC found another site in the state to collect quartz and get wet at the same time. In September, we searched the shores of the Moose River.
Wayne County Gem and Mineral Club has decided to make 2016 the year of the Birthstone. And isn’t garnet a great way to get started!
Garnets are hard (Moh’s hardness of 6.5-7.5), or as hard or harder than quartz. As members of the isometric crystal system garnets are symmetric with three equal and perpendicular axes. Garnets are colorful: red, yellow, green and many shades of each. And garnet is the birthstone for all born in January.
