Post subject: Demons and wonders...of the mineral world
Posted: Sat May 23, 2020 12:11 pm
Gold Member
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2009 9:56 am Posts: 1284
'Demons and Wonders', I'm borrowing that title from a french edition of H.P. Lovecraft, since we shall now venture into the dark, creepy, gloomy corners of mineralogy
Angry Halloween pumpkin (Agate from Morocco)
Haunted mineral? Apparition of an aquamarine spectre in an alcove of albite. From Pakistan.
An agate cabochon which also seem to be haunted by spirits
It may not be that creepy, but that's only a beginning...
...arachnophobia anyone? The remains of this creepy-crawly that had ventured into a copper mine of Arizona were slowly replaced by copper. That makes a weird pseudomorph.
Horror out of blazing light, a scorpion-spider caught in amber from Myanmar. This 100 million years old Chimerachne only looks big under the microscope.
Fossilized two-headed "dragon" from China. This cretaceous aquatic reptile, a young hyphalosaurus, is showing a rare malformation (bicephaly). As an adult it could have exceeded one meter in length.
Opal has long been associated to an evil influence, but for performing black magic, just bring an agate...
The bloody entrails of an agate. Those hellish agates with red hematite core are known as 'crater agates' and are found in Patagonia.
Another agate (from Turkey), staring at you in a badly disturbing way.
Memento Mori! Remember you shall die, and return to dust...or turquoise
Bones in the mud...have turned into turquoise. This is known as odontolite. While these bones, found in Nevada, are of animal origin, there is also such a thing as human odontolite, such as this jawbone recovered from a mine in Utah: https://www.mindat.org/photo-683223.html
Funeral flowers...of atacamite and chalcanthite grown from a mouse corpse, which was found in a russian copper mine. Collection of the Fersman Mineralogical Museum in Moscow.
The fossilized skull of the Altamura man, covered with calcite concretions, as found in the Lamalunga Cave in Italy.
The copper mummy. In a Chile mine was found the copper-mineralized cadaver of a pre-Colombian indian who was killed in a mining accident 550 A.D. It is now on display in the American Museum of Natural History.
I had saved the most terrifying for last, with a beautifully macabre gemological artifact:
A pre-Colombian mask consisting of turquoise and black lignite mosaic over human skull, staring at you with its eyes of polished pyrite (surrounded by rings of white conch shell). Representing the god Tezcatlipoca, 15-16th century, British Museum.
...and just when I thought things couldn't get any creepier, I heard of lithopedions!
These aren't actually minerals, since they are of organic origin and unrelated to any geological process, still, these stones are made of mineral matter, similarly to kidney stones...only a lot creepier!
These are stone babies aka lithopedions. That is a foetus that calcified in-vivo. More info here
Good night, sweet dreams...
Last edited by cascaillou on Sun Oct 04, 2020 9:29 pm, edited 12 times in total.
Post subject: Re: Demons and wonders...of the mineral world
Posted: Mon Sep 28, 2020 3:07 pm
Established Member
Joined: Fri Jun 19, 2020 8:16 pm Posts: 34
I picked up this flint in the courtyard of the Stepped Pyramid in Sakkara. When I cut it open and polished it I found this little figure. I've always thought it looked like a little skeleton ghost in a cavern. This seemed very appropriate considering the location, which surely, is haunted!
Attachments:
Sakkara-flint352.jpg [ 69.04 KiB | Viewed 4085 times ]
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot post attachments in this forum