Unusual Rocks

I’m a pebble picker upper from way back and love even the most basic rocks. But here are some of the more unusual ones I have found on my travels.

A $4000 hunk of rock……turns out to be a piece of jade when you shine a light on it to show its depth and quality. (Myanmar Jade Market.)Cubic pyrite crystals in a gem store in Banff. Pyrite is also called ‘Fool’s Gold’ and can show up in glittery veins that is very much like real gold .Fossils of Ammonite shells showing their natural iridescence. (Top: Cardiff Museum, Wales. Bottom: Banff, Canada.)Another of my favourite fossils is petrified Palm Wood.
This chunk of hematite rock in the Cardiff Natural History Museum shows off its metallic lustre, although the lighting has rendered the its normal charcoal colouring totally into intriguing shades of brown and green.Bismuth crystals are just plain weird!
Although Amethyst crystals are fairly common I never tire of seeing a mass of them embedded in what I would call a ‘thunder egg’ – grey and boring on the outside and filled with sparkling treasures on the inside.Obsidian rock in the Puerto Vallarta Botanical Garden in Mexico. Obsidian is a black volcanic glass and Mexico has a lot of volcanoes, so there is a lot of it around. I love the almost abstract quality of this stone.More of the Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge: Unusual.