Thursday, May 10, 2012

Lake Superior Agates

There has been continued progress on the "project." Over the last couple of days I took hundreds of pictures of Lake Superior agates for the online rockhounding adventure. For today's posting, I'll include just a few.

Many people come into the museum and assume that the majority of agates found on the beach are "hidden" by a thick husk.  The opposite is actually true.  Not only have these loose agates survived the waves, ice, and sand of the Lake Superior basin over the last 10,000 years, but they have survived glaciers and other geologic events for hundreds of thousands of years.  So for the most part Lake Superior agates have fractured surfaces that now expose their beauty, or they have other "clues" that give them away so that persistent agate hunters can find them.

The agate below has fractured surfaces as well as obvious banding.


Botryoidal structure shows itself in the following agate, as well as some banding...


Gray and red color, conchoidal fractures, and banding show on the next agate...


Pit marked surface, gray color, some iron oxide staining show on the next agate...


Conchoidal fractures, banding, and red color show on this agate...


Gray chalcedony color, pit marked surface....


Translucency, waxy luster, limonite yellow coating, gray color, structure all show on the next agate...



Yellow limonite coating, structure, waxy luster, gray color...

Conchoidal fracture, red color, banding....


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