🔎 UNIDENTIFIED Help with rock i do not recognize

Crendel

Jr. Member
Aug 30, 2018
23
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western ny
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All Treasure Hunting
Hello! I found this roughly egg sized rock in the niagara river in western new york in about 6 inches of water. I'm fairly familiar with a lot of the rocks found here but haven't come across something like this before. Feels about "normal" rock weight for its size. These are wet photos. (The green isn't algae). If anyone has an idea what this might be I'd be much obliged as I'm sort of stumped. Cheers!
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Actually, I'm going to say it's Bloodstone. It does look like chalcedony.

It also looks a lot like Dragon Blood Stone, but it's not known to be found in NY while Bloodstone is more likely to be.

I'd love a specimen if you ever find more.
It could be bloodstone jasper (Heliotrope) in which case the red coloring would be hematite. Often chalcedony can take on fantastic forms and colors but in the end it's just colored quartz. The break on the back looks a little to hackly for chalcedony but it also looks like there may be a different material where the break is.

I mined several bloodstone and poppy jasper boulders back in the 70's. Bloodstone looks different wherever it's mined but I've never seen the green in bloodstone be so light and bright as in this example. Like most jasper the colors in bloodstone tend to be muddy. The red on the other hand appears to be the same color as much of the cinnabar I've encountered through the years. There are mercury deposits in New York but no known bloodstone.

It could be either or neither. It's just a picture.
 

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Actually, I'm going to say it's Bloodstone. It does look like chalcedony.

It also looks a lot like Dragon Blood Stone, but it's not known to be found in NY while Bloodstone is more likely to be.

I'd love a specimen if you ever find more.
first one like this ive come across in my 45 years of poking around but if i locate another one i promise i will remember you!
 

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I vote Anyolite/Epidote, but rocks aren't anything like birds that are very specific in what they are, unless you are one to label all black birds a Blackbird. So I could be wrong.
 

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Thanks to everyone! I appreciate it. I did get it on a scale and it's about 170 grams. Again about the size of a medium egg maybe. It's not magnetic at all and will give just a very very weak iron signal with the metal detector. I mean very weak but it's definitely there. Does not show a color streak- really just scrapes into it. I'll post a few more photos here- dry this time. It really is much darker I think than the first photos show, though I'm not using any kind of filter. I can see what looks like a couple of very tiny pale green nodules when I look through the loupe. The curved pock marked edge is also kind of puzzling. Its really smooth. Im almost wondering if this is some kind of basalt or even a weird slag. Anyway thanks again all! Cheers!
 

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.....rocks aren't anything like birds that are very specific in what they are, unless you are one to label all black birds a Blackbird. So I could be wrong. ....
that's correct.
the only way to identify rocks (as teaches in geology) is to recognise minerals and structures in it. this is because you can have great variation.
with practice you can tell it at glance... like a wood worker recognizes wood...

a simple example:
you see all the minerals that form a granite: quartz, feldspar, mica etc.
if the structure is cristalline (crystals) it's a granite (magmatic)
if the minerals are elongated an foliated it's a gneiss (metamorphic)

this make a big difference
 

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Thanks to everyone! I appreciate it. I did get it on a scale and it's about 170 grams. Again about the size of a medium egg maybe. It's not magnetic at all and will give just a very very weak iron signal with the metal detector. I mean very weak but it's definitely there. Does not show a color streak- really just scrapes into it. I'll post a few more photos here- dry this time. It really is much darker I think than the first photos show, though I'm not using any kind of filter. I can see what looks like a couple of very tiny pale green nodules when I look through the loupe. The curved pock marked edge is also kind of puzzling. Its really smooth. Im almost wondering if this is some kind of basalt or even a weird slag. Anyway thanks again all! Cheers!
I have found a tick that I can’t identify
 

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Rhyolite with Epidote is my guess.

I doubt there is any Anyolite being found in the Niagra river..
 

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I agree with the others that the green looks like epidote. It looks similar to a lot of green and red rocks I find in the basalts of western Washington. But they aren't as beautiful as yours!
I also second the opinion that would look great if it's tumbled!
 

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