Today I had a ton of chores to do, so I dug my rocks out and took pictures of some of them. Now I guess I will do the chores, but when I sit down I will play with the photos and post the results in this thread. Will probably add to it every now and again for a while.
This piece makes the hippie part of my soul happy, what with looking like yin and yang on one side. About an inch and a half in diameter, smoky quartz.
Fossil time. I only took pics of a few of these, but that still means a ton of pics for me to sort through. After this post, I better do dishes and dinner. I know very little about these pieces, I just shop for pretty things at the Gem Faire :).
I love ammonites. Opalization, interesting patterns and textures, full of surprises as you rotate them in the light. Also fun to knit toys of.
And, of course, a tooth from everyone's favorite giant extinct shark I can't fully remember without looking up.
@POOetryma Cool. I wonder if the rings tell you about the health of the creature at that point in its life.
@tippitiwichet They can, at the very least, tell you how old it was when it died and give you an idea of how fast it grew. Any irregularities in the ring patterns or bone pathology can indicate health problems during life.
(I once found a cetacean lumbar vertebra in that same formation with a bone spur growing into the spinal cord, intruding into the neural arch where the cord goes. I speculated at the time that it may have contributed to its death.)
@POOetryma Wow, the poor thing. That would be fascinating to see.
@tippitiwichet Like almost every other fossil I've found here (we trip over them!), you'll find it in the Charleston Museum's collection.
Now, for the coup de grace. Have you ever been to the American Museum of Natural History? If so, did you stroll through their Hall of Ancient Seas? 😊
@POOetryma No, but that sounds like a new goal. The natural science museum in Houston had some beautiful gemstones and a few dinosaurs though. Here we just have a haunted art museum, which is nice.
@tippitiwichet OK, then. See my avi? That is the biggest flying bird of all time: Pelagornis sandersi (or, just Pelagornis, if you prefer), with an estimated wingspan of ~24 feet. Here it is on display at the Charleston Museum. Pelagornis was a pseudodontornid ("false toothed bird"), with bony spurs in the bill that functioned as teeth. True teeth are separate, socketed bones in the jaw. This find is mine, from 1983.
@tippitiwichet The AMNH did the prep work and made 2 casts of the skeleton. One is on display there and we got the other, plus the original fossil. Pic 1 is half of its mandible.
@POOetryma She is beautiful, and I want to draw her in budgie colors.
@tippitiwichet The shark is Otodus megaladon, which lived from the early Miocene, perhaps the late Oligocene, about 25M y.a., to the end of the Pliocene or very early Pleistocene, about 2M y.a. Here's a vertebra I found here in Charleston, SC, several years ago. Not sure if it's Otodus megaladon or not. Dates to the late Oligocene, circa 26M y.a. The tooth is from a different species entirely. Dollar bill for scale. Donated it to the Charleston Museum.