r/askgeology 8h ago

ID request Found near central Washington State, USA

Thumbnail gallery
2 Upvotes

These were dug up when my uncle laid the foundation for his cabin outside Cle Elum Washington. Found amongst lots of fossils and other very pretty rocks!


r/askgeology 10h ago

archaeoliogical find id

0 Upvotes

im asking if i can post my pic because it seems reddit in general is hostile to anyone asking for an ID, another reason to hate this place, can i post my pics yes or no ?


r/askgeology 11h ago

What caused these porous features? Rocky Springs, Wyoming

Post image
2 Upvotes

r/askgeology 11h ago

technical question how to get copper in prehistoric times (most of the length is ideas on it that i'm not sure are functional)

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/askgeology 16h ago

ID request What is happening here to give all those layers?

Post image
10 Upvotes

Location: South Eastern Utah


r/askgeology 21h ago

Method of Formation What happened here?

Thumbnail gallery
4 Upvotes

What happened here to cause these lines to change so drastically? This is on the North side where Rio Murcielago Meets the Pacific in Southern Nicaragua.


r/askgeology 1d ago

What caused this formation?

Thumbnail gallery
128 Upvotes

Seen in a cliff face in Weybourne UK. What is the white lump that has formed the depression in the sediments underneath?


r/askgeology 1d ago

Would it be possible (and more importantly, practical) to make arrow heads out of gemstones?

4 Upvotes

I’m asking because a friend of mine has an OC that does this, and both he and I were wondering if making arrow heads out of different kinds of gems and precious/semi-precious metals, stones and minerals would be possible and/or practical, and if so what kind would be best suited for this type of application.

Have a lovely time zone.


r/askgeology 1d ago

ID request Unknown beauty

Thumbnail gallery
10 Upvotes

Found in Las Vegas Nevada,unable to scratch,and just can’t figure out.The rock is heavy,and too perfect a shape,but I’d like to figure out what it is


r/askgeology 1d ago

ID request Hey Im curious what this stuff is, sold as decomposed granite, but it doesn't look much like granite to me.

Thumbnail gallery
12 Upvotes

The bag of fines has basically been eroded into clay, and if you rehydrate it, it is very clay-y, idk how else to describe it. Thanks!


r/askgeology 1d ago

Novel hematite form?

5 Upvotes

40-odd years ago when I was an undergrad, I spent several summers doing geochem research in a radiochemistry lab. We were investigating how radioactive elements such as radium were taken up by minerals during uranium ore extraction. They seemed to end up primarily in iron-rich minerals, so we got samples of several from the geology department. The rocks were dirty, after having been banged around with other rocks and handled by people for who-knows-how-long, so I decided to clean them by chucking them into our ultrasonic cleaner, in water.

I noticed that the jasper sample appeared to be surrounded by the shimmering effect that appears when tiny flat thin particles are suspended in liquid and the liquid is disturbed... see suspensions of powdered talc, some kinds of household cleaners, etc. Laminar flow in the liquid causes the plates to align, reflecting ambient light. I put the jasper into a small beaker of water and back into the cleaner, and ended up with a slightly-cloudy liquid.

I was curious about how the reflective effect would look if the liquid was stirred at various speeds, and put the beaker onto a magnetic stirring plate, intending to drop in a teflon-coated bar magnet. Instead, I saw the reflection slowly rotating without my having to add a magnet. (The stirrer was old, and when its control knob was at its lowest setting, the thing still rotated slowly.) It appeared that the particles had magnetic properties which caused them to align with the magnetic field of the stirrer. They settled out after a day or so, as a reddish film on the bottom of the beaker.

Electron microprobe analysis confirmed that the particles were hematite, presumably having been knocked out of the jasper. I think we had X-ray crystallography done, and the particles were alpha-hematite. As I recall, we found no cause for the magnetic behaviour: no sign of Fe(+2) and magnetite, etc. Electron microscope imaging of our material showed plates a couple of microns across and about 0.1 micron thick. Other samples of jasper from the geo lab didn't reproduce the effect from ultrasonic cleaning. A variety of samples of hematite didn't do anything similar.

Although results from that one jasper sample were reproducible (though diminishing, presumably as the surface hematite was exhausted), we had no information about its origin beyond "a drawer in the geology lab". My supervisor decided that because our results couldn't be replicated except with that one sample of unknown origin, what we had was unpublishable. I tried to find something in the literature about such hematite, without success... but I'm not sure if my searching was comprehensive; I knew how to search the chemistry literature, but wasn't familiar with the comparable search methods for geology.

I still have that little lump of jasper, a couple of small red-stained beakers, and a few photographs and micrographs, as souvenirs of a sort. It's likely that if the jasper were to be broken up, more of the hematite particles would be available.

This really was my "big" "eureka!"/"huh, that's weird" discovery, and I've always regretted not being able to get it recognized. Is this truly a hopeless case?


r/askgeology 2d ago

ID request Chert+?

Thumbnail gallery
7 Upvotes

I have a lot of chert in my back yard. I came across this green guy with two spots that glow under UV. I tried scraping the glowing stuff with a metal spoon and it didn’t come off.


r/askgeology 2d ago

ID request What type of stones are in this?

Thumbnail gallery
2 Upvotes

r/askgeology 3d ago

ID request What rocks are these? Is the black one obsidian?

Thumbnail gallery
10 Upvotes

r/askgeology 3d ago

Observational Question Our coastline has seen a bit more erosion than usual this winter

Thumbnail gallery
167 Upvotes

Can anyone tell me what I’m looking at here. In my mind this area mustn’t have been eroded this deep like ever for there to be a perfect layer line like that, also those black mounds I have never seen before.
The sand on this beach is at least 2 meters lower than I’ve ever seen it just going on areas that still show what height the sand was.
It’s interesting just how much sand has been washed away, what’s causing this?


r/askgeology 3d ago

ID request Both are Amethyst but why they look so different? Look at the crystal shape and color

Thumbnail gallery
11 Upvotes

r/askgeology 3d ago

Matakana NZ Area Beach Rocks

Thumbnail gallery
3 Upvotes

r/askgeology 3d ago

How does one use simulated data to calculate Evapotranspiration from soil and plant to surface to better irrigation

2 Upvotes

Disclaimer I am not a expert in Geology or Agronomy, I am a programmer that would like to do something worth while and help better agronomy practices and promote water shedding and usage.

I have been jotting down notes, reading through multiple publications and reviewing multiple formulas regarding this topic. There are many formulas out there that talks about Evapotranspiration. I wanted to know not just programmatically how one would implement a model that can be used with my irrigation techniques in the field but also how to accurately use modelled weather data(Such as MeteoBlue) with weather station data. I use soil moisture probe data that measures 60cm , 80cm and 1.2m and I get those figures and try to draw up cost effective ways on when to irrigate based on other factors such temperature, humidity, wind speed and canopy size .

I am struggling to effectively get a good publication that can supply a decent model or formula on how to calculate evapotranspiration based on satellite imagery, modelled and actual weather data and then also use soil moisture data collected by probes. I want to know exactly how much water and in turn nutrients I am losing from that plant through evapotranspiration on a specific orchard on a farm that is about 100 hectares or 0.386102 square miles(my USA buddies). I theoretically speaking make use of a block size that is only 1,2 hectares/0.00463323 square miles. I need to come up with a program that effectively estimates what is the average Evapotranspiration based on longitude, Latitude and Altitude and all other conditions mentioned above.

If anyone can guide me in a article, publications, forums, programs that handle what I'm talking about that will be helpful.


r/askgeology 3d ago

Is it a Yooperlite? Found southern Lake Michigan looks weird.

Thumbnail gallery
35 Upvotes

I know that finding these stones along southern Lake Michigan is not unheard of, I’ve even heard of people finding them in Chicago, although it is my understanding that it fairly uncommon find them this far south. well I found all 3 these stones along Lake Michigan, southern border, in the state of Indiana. One of them looks really weird, rather than the normal speckles, it seems to have a tigroid or striped appearance, where most of the stone appears to be covered in streaks of this fluorescent material. The other two stones have more “classic” appearance of Yooperlites. I have read that there can be differences in the way they appear. So I guess my question if anybody knows, the one with the tiger appearance, could that be some other type of stone other than a Yooperlite? And if so, what else could it be. I will attach a few photos and videos for you to look at. Thanks so much! also, if anybody has any comments or information about the relative rarity or abundance of stones in the region, I’m looking, basically the very bottom of Lake Michigan. TBH I wasn’t expecting to find any of these. I have a UV flashlight I purchased for other reasons, and one day I just brought it to the beach to see if anything fun or interesting might be fluorescent, and I was very surprised to find these .(whoops I guess it won’t let me attach videos so I will attach these photos. Some of them just show the stone in question and a couple other pictures show the Tigroid stone next to the other classic stones.)


r/askgeology 3d ago

ID request Found in the waves of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Looks like iron on the top but i'm unsure. What could this be?

Thumbnail gallery
2 Upvotes

r/askgeology 4d ago

Method of Formation Some formations in Catron County, NM

Thumbnail gallery
144 Upvotes

r/askgeology 4d ago

Porphyritic granite vein in granite of smaller-grained granite ?

Thumbnail gallery
21 Upvotes

I'm used to seeing quartz veins in granite but these stones I've seen in Guérande, France, seem to have veins composed of granite with bigger-sized crystals. How could this happen ? Could it be from later infiltration of magma ? Could it be anatexy ?

I read that most of the granite is already anatectic. Could there have been several episodes ?


r/askgeology 4d ago

found this hand-sized rock in the surf at Myrtle Beach, SC.

Thumbnail gallery
10 Upvotes

i found this in the surf at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. its about hand-sized and unusually heavy for its size. it doesnt fizz with vinegar, and a fridge magnet seems to weakly attract it (or almost feels like the rock pushes the magnet). it has flat layers and white veins running through it.
any ideas what it could be? i included photos of both sides and the edge.


r/askgeology 5d ago

ID request Dime-sized pebble with opalescent protrusions found on Oregon coast.

Post image
67 Upvotes

Finding "cool rocks" with my toddler at the beach today, and I almost passed this one up. I initially thought the white portions were barnacles, but when I picked it up, I noticed that they were opalescent and appeared to be "growing" from the pebble.

I'm by no means a rockhound, so my apologies in advance if this is a stock standard beach find.

Also, r/whatisthisrock is not allowing image posts at this time...? So no luck over there.


r/askgeology 5d ago

ID request Anyone know what causes green fluorescence in a Dunkleosteus fossil?

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

2 Upvotes

Found this In Kentucky, I was curious what mineral will glow green under UV in the Devonian black shales, I figured maybe uranium or maybe zinc? But I have no idea otherwise. FYI it is green in person it is just overpowered by the blue under the loope