Id like to exchange experience.

Do you mean a collector of rocks and fossils and meteors?
Or a person that is into rock music?

plasko20 said: Do you mean a collector of rocks and fossils and meteors?
Or a person that is into rock music?

The former. I do believe the latter are called "rockers"

I have a small collection of those things I said.
Some fossils I have found on my own (just small fossil shells and sea sponges).

Once I discovered a patch of fossilized shells at the top of the Grand Canyon!
But I only took photos as it is a national park and you are not allowed to remove anything. But still, I decided not to tell a soul the exact off-trail location because they would be chipped out whether by fossil hunter or park geologist.

My collection is small but I do have the usual stuff. As well as a couple of more interesting things, such as a fossil backbone piece from a....I think a hadrosaur.

From the rocks, I think my fave are opals. They really catch the light with their "fire". I have mostly cut and polished cabochon opals (nothing expensive, mostly cheaper Welo opals from Africa), but also some raw ones from Australia. I have some chunks of lava rock of different types (including splatter), I picked up off the ground for myself in Hawaii and Iceland. Supposed to be bad luck, but I do not believe in luck so whatever.

Meteors, I have a little bit of pallasite but mostly the usual iron-nickel, some with regmaglypts.

I got to touch a piece of the moon once, when I visited NASA Kennedy Space Center. But of-course hundreds of thousands of people had touched it before me so I was probably only touching the build up of oil from their hands.

The collecting has resulted in my always staring at the ground when others I am with are looking at the view far away.

Years ago, when I was a ranger on a national forest in Utah, we hosted a group of paleontologists from UC Berkeley. The area (east side of the Wasatch Plateau and the San Rafael Swell) is prime fossil territory. On my district were some deep Morrison formation beds, gray, yellow and beige, highly erodible. The highest mountain was capped by layers of marine limestone. We were doing watershed restoration, which involved cutting furrows on the contours and seeding them. The paleos gave me several empty egg cartons and a topo map, to pick up samples and log the locations. I found gar pike scales on anthills, and various snails, clamshells, and lots of bone fragments, mostly rusty red and black.

Down in the Morrison beds I spotted a large piece exposed by erosion that looked like the rim of a rusted iron wheel. Took them up to see it and they got really excited, thinking it was the rim of a bony crest or frill. They stabilized the site and planned a second session to excavate, but I wasn't around for that.

plasko20 said: I have a small collection of those things I said.
Some fossils I have found on my own (just small fossil shells and sea sponges).

Once I discovered a patch of fossilized shells at the top of the Grand Canyon!
But I only took photos as it is a national park and you are not allowed to remove anything. But still, I decided not to tell a soul the exact off-trail location because they would be chipped out whether by fossil hunter or park geologist.

My collection is small but I do have the usual stuff. As well as a couple of more interesting things, such as a fossil backbone piece from a....I think a hadrosaur.

From the rocks, I think my fave are opals. They really catch the light with their "fire". I have mostly cut and polished cabochon opals (nothing expensive, mostly cheaper Welo opals from Africa), but also some raw ones from Australia. I have some chunks of lava rock of different types (including splatter), I picked up off the ground for myself in Hawaii and Iceland. Supposed to be bad luck, but I do not believe in luck so whatever.

Meteors, I have a little bit of pallasite but mostly the usual iron-nickel, some with regmaglypts.

I got to touch a piece of the moon once, when I visited NASA Kennedy Space Center. But of-course hundreds of thousands of people had touched it before me so I was probably only touching the build up of oil from their hands.

The collecting has resulted in my always staring at the ground when others I am with are looking at the view far away.

So far I bought mainly fossils, but have found a couple of things on my own..
no idea. Definetely a shale fossil though. Gonna go there friday maybe

Bone. Lotta bones found in that area...definetly petrified because its dense

Coral. Large piece. No ID.



Eh. I mainly collect jasper these days. Have been lots of calcite, and a few agates///






(agates)






(quartz)









(calcite)
Other stuff, oddities

(staurolite)



(garnets)

(chrysotile) now sealed


(hornblende)


(carnelian)
Jaspers:

(red)


(brown)


banded


multicolor




black

Yellow

(pyrolusite dendrites)

This year we went hiking and there was a mountain with lots and lots and lots of giant boulders of quartz (most likely), and thankfully smaller pieces too. I kept picking up piece after piece on our daylong hike and slipping into my big backpack. When I weighed them upon going home turns out I was carrying over 25lbs of extra rock weight . No wonder I was so out of breath and sweating. The weather was already baking hot that day. But, the larger rocks now look good in my garden so I am happy.

Unfortunately, my new camera deleted all my holiday photos so I cannot show the boulders.

plasko20 said: This year we went hiking and there was a mountain with lots and lots and lots of giant boulders of quartz (most likely), and thankfully smaller pieces too. I kept picking up piece after piece on our daylong hike and slipping into my big backpack. When I weighed them upon going home turns out I was carrying over 25lbs of extra rock weight . No wonder I was so out of breath and sweating. The weather was already baking hot that day. But, the larger rocks now look good in my garden so I am happy.

Unfortunately, my new camera deleted all my holiday photos so I cannot show the boulders.

I occasionally find quartz veins, but most of them are in schist. In the rare occasion that I did find crystals....they were laying in the open, found in boulders with calcite filled cavities. Managed to scrounge a few pieces.
I did fine pure (almost transparent) quartz from a granite vein, but didnt have cavities so no crystals. Where I found the garnets and staurolite.Also found pyrite once. In a river rock....

Idk I try to plan my trips, but also go by gut feel.
The shale thing was gut feel. So was the quartz and the first agate and most jaspers.
Others, well, meticulous planning and luck.

I actually found lovely pyrite on marble....in my garden. My yard has marble chips purchased as a walkway, and the pyrite (I assume) was right there glistening at me one day. I put it in my display case with the other rocks. It is good when the rocks come to you!

I would love to plan a trip to find some cool rocks. But have zero expertise in that regard. There is a state park in the USA called Crater of Diamonds. There , they encourage people to look for diamonds and many have been found over the years (yes, you get to keep your finds). I did consider going there for fun.
https://www.arkansasstateparks...

plasko20 said: I actually found lovely pyrite on marble....in my garden. My yard has marble chips purchased as a walkway, and the pyrite (I assume) was right there glistening at me one day. I put it in my display case with the other rocks. It is good when the rocks come to you!

I would love to plan a trip to find some cool rocks. But have zero expertise in that regard. There is a state park in the USA called Crater of Diamonds. There , they encourage people to look for diamonds and many have been found over the years (yes, you get to keep your finds). I did consider going there for fun.
https://www.arkansasstateparks...

You dont know how easy you have it. In your country most mines and sites where people rockhound are well know and labeled and some of them open to the public.
Geodes, agates, garnets, quartz etc. Or road cuts...
Out here.... have a low detail geological map, and semi accurate mindat website info and youre good to go....

A friend got me interested in ventifacts, rocks scoured by persistent wind and blowing sand (or snow) over centuries. Near our place there are Miocene surfaces, flat ridgetops, that don't erode much. Harder rocks scattered about get fluted and polished by the wind (plenty of that hereabouts.)

I love rocks and would have picked up (or photographed if picking up is prohibited) all of the rocks pictured here so far.

I found this rock locally, I call it Twinkie rock.


I found this in Colorado. This is so amazing, my uninterested family members even understood why I picked up this one. (The background is a home-made paver with seashells stuck in it. Note, most of them have held up well but coquina shells are too fragile.)


I have no ability to give mine proper names and probably won't remember if you tell me, but I have always loved rocks. I've never taken any pics of most of them but I will soon, on the next weekend day when it's not pleasant to be outside.

Oh yes. . It is always lovely to see pictures of nice rocks.

I think this is fuchsite? I got it @ a mine gift shop in CO. It's very sparkly. It's one of my fav rocks. As soon as I saw it, I had to have it.




This seems like it has some dye added.



standard amethyst fragment



I took more pics of other found and purchased rocks, but now that I look @ them on a big monitor, they're too blurry to bother. Will try again soon.

purpleinopp said: I think this is fuchsite? I got it @ a mine gift shop in CO. It's very sparkly. It's one of my fav rocks. As soon as I saw it, I had to have it.




This seems like it has some dye added.



standard amethyst fragment



I took more pics of other found and purchased rocks, but now that I look @ them on a big monitor, they're too blurry to bother. Will try again soon.

First one looks a bit like Zoisite, subgroup Anyolite https://www.google.com/search?....
I see that fuchsite is pretty identical. Cool. Now I am gonna have problems in the future telling them apart. I am guessing the anyolite has black bits in it too, while fuschite does not (going by photos - pure guess).

I have no idea, and am not good @ the names. I suppose those are nicknames, not botanical names. If so we're just talking about rocks as sage and daisy, not Salvia and Leucanthemum.

I went looking for pics of zoisite and found a very similar looking rock. Says it's also known as anyolite. This is amazing!
https://trulyexperiences.com/b...

Me too, the names of most escape me.
I was trying to find a cool photo of one I have, to share here, but cannot remember what to search for on the computer. Silly brain. If I remember I will see if I can find it later.

Some larger ones I bought and placed in the garden to enhance the flowerbeds. However, I later realized that the rain would dissolve some of them as they are fragile salt crystals (e.g. selenite), or make others brittle (celestite, I recall, was not happy out there). So I had to gather them all up and put them back indoors on a big windowsill. Pity, it was fun putting nature back into nature.

Ok, I found the photo I wanted of my rock slab.
A composite of willemite and calcite, in regular light and under UV light.