Unusual rock

jeremiah

Member
Any idea`s what this rock is. The red does not go all the way through. Just posted a side view, the red part is not just on the surface. The white part looks like a smooth river rock.
 

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Jeff C.

Chief Grass Master
No idea, but I like it.
 

Artfuldodger

Senior Member
Interesting, the red is some type of iron. Weird how perfect the edge is where it meets the base rock. I see some quartz in the red part. I've seen rock that looks just like the red one, just not a coating of it with that definition of an edge on another rock .The base may be quartz.
Perhaps the red is an iron/hematite/goethite coating on quartz?

I wonder what made the defined edge of the coating?

Can you take a side picture?
 
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Artfuldodger

Senior Member
A rock in the bottom of a hole with an iron pipe fence post or something sitting on it for 50 years.
Rain trickling down the pipe onto the rock.
 

JustUs4All

Slow Mod
Staff member
I picked up a similar rock from a creek in Utah in 1957. It was the size and shape of a large irish potato and was worn smooth by the action of water and other rocks. The majority of the rock had a dull red appearance. There was a white colored nearly perfectly round 3/4 inch dot on both sides of the rock.

About 50 years later my daughter decide , in my absence, to heat that rock up in the fireplace. At that point my suspicion was confirmed that the white color went completely through the rock as if a hole had been drilled through it and then filled with a white substance.

The only explanation I can think of would be that the red layer was laid down in a body of water and then had a hole punched in it by a stick or a burrowing animal and then the hole was filled by an overlaying white sediment.
 

NCHillbilly

Administrator
Staff member
From the crystal growth on the reddish part, it looks like a vug pocket (kind of on the same principal as a geode,) inside a quartz vein that broke off through the vug cavity and weathered down.
 

Artfuldodger

Senior Member
I thought I saw some crystal growth under the red part too. I've seen the vug part of a rock covered with an iron oxide of some type.
I've also seen the vug part of a rock looking way different from the other smooth part. Crystal vugs, druzy vugs, botryoidal hematite on the vug part, etc.
But i've never seen anything with that much of a defined edge. It's so round and even. Not irregular at all.

Was also wondering if it once was all smooth and something made the red part wear. I'm not sure that process would make crystals form though.

I guess a vug or geode center is formed when water deposits of dissolved quartz, amethyst, and other minerals over time. Thus forming crystals or druzy in the vug or hollow crevice or voids.
Dissolved silicates and/or carbonates are deposited on the inside surface in the vug or void.

Later on after say the quartz is formed, water containing iron comes along and deposits hematite or whatever over these quartz crystals or whatever else is in the vug.
 
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Artfuldodger

Senior Member
Here is a good example of a vug on a piece of flourite covered in Pyrite, Goethite and Hematite.
The flourite is the parent rock(?) with the other minerals over the vug part of that rock. This is just a small piece removed from that larger vug cavity or vein.

This example is rough on the non-vug part but many rocks are smooth on that part. Actually if we could see the bottom of this example, it's probably smooth.
 

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Artfuldodger

Senior Member
Hematite is an extremely common mineral. It can form as a sedimentary precipitate, a product of weathering of other iron rich minerals in soils and oxidized zones of ore deposits, as a primary mineral in hydrothermal veins, and as a metamorphic mineral.

Then there is iron hydroxides such as goethite and limonite. Turghite is a 'variety' of either hematite or goethite.

Various forms of iron oxides or hydroxides.

These iron minerals range in color from black, red, purple, brown, and yellow.
Some of the hematite on Graves Mountain in Lincoln County Georgia is iridescent or rainbow looking. It's usually botryodial or globular looking.
 

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Artfuldodger

Senior Member
Is it magnetic?

Not sure if you are asking about iron rocks in general or the OP's rock.

I think Magnetite is the only rock to be attracted to a magnet or to be magnetized.
Magnetite that is already magnetized in nature is called Lodestone.

I'm not sure what it is about them compared to other iron rocks that makes them have these properties. Just the right kind of iron I guess.

There might be a few other rock types I don't know about. Some rock types do but are very weak. I've just recently got into learning more about rocks and gems. I've always been interested in them but more so going to Graves Mountain and rock swaps.
 

NOYDB

BANNED
Not sure if you are asking about iron rocks in general or the OP's rock.

I think Magnetite is the only rock to be attracted to a magnet or to be magnetized.
Magnetite that is already magnetized in nature is called Lodestone.

I'm not sure what it is about them compared to other iron rocks that makes them have these properties. Just the right kind of iron I guess.

There might be a few other rock types I don't know about. Some rock types do but are very weak. I've just recently got into learning more about rocks and gems. I've always been interested in them but more so going to Graves Mountain and rock swaps.

Way back in the days when my age was still in single digits, I was a, as then known, "rockhound". Went to shows to buy and trade mineral samples. Some from mines, others found by other rockhounds. Stuff moved from other continents. Some from local areas. Good source was cuts into rocky mountain passes for roads. It coincided with my first hunts for fossils. In Oregon to the east of the Cascades, the desert is a good place to find all types of ores and crystals. In an area known as the painted desert. The area between Oregon to the west and Idaho to the east was dry and hot in the summer but rain washed into view all sorts of samples for those who knew how to look.
 
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