Geology Picture of the Week, October 17-23, 2004: Etna Otherworldly, plus Epidote

Etna Volcan Sicilien ^ | October 16, 2004 | Charles Rivere

[cogitator]

First of all, one might think I'm Etna-obsessed. Not true; I posted some images of the Piton de la Fournaise effusive eruption before this. But the Etna pictures continue to be interesting, so why not? This one, primarily due to the cold lava spires in the background, looked like a science-fiction movie set (shrunk for display, click to see the full-size image):

And now for something completely different; here's an article I happened to read in the doctor's office. I couldn't find the image accompanying the article, so I found a different image of an epidote crystal. The article was in Smithsonian magazine.

Tucson Trunk Sale

At the nation's largest gems and minerals show, Smithsonian curators went looking for the goods

From afar, the scene in the hotel parking lot in Tucson last February had all the appearances of thieves fencing stolen goods, but it was really all about research. Smithsonian gems and minerals experts Jeffrey Post, Paul Pohwat and Mike Wise crowded around the open trunk of a tan Chrysler Sebring. Campbell Bridges, a British gems dealer from Kenya, pulled from the trunk a package the size of a sandwich. Unwrapping it, Bridges revealed a five-inch piece of an exceedingly rare mineral, epidote. In the bright desert sunshine, the lustrous, dark green crystal sparkled. The three experts gasped.

The specimen had come from a remote Kenyan pit mine whose walls had collapsed. Bridges said that an interested buyer was expected in the next 15 minutes. Post and colleagues hurriedly conferred, then offered the dealer a price that Pohwat would describe only as in the low five figures. Thus the epidote joined some 375,000 gems and minerals at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

For two weeks at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Society's show, Post and his colleagues bartered, traded and bought pieces, as well as shared information with dealers, collectors and experts. Post, 50, says the show "is the single most important event for adding to our collection."

In 23 hotels and motels across town, dealers rented rooms, installed elaborate glass cases and displayed exotic minerals and uncut gemstones. A tent held a half-dozen ten-foot-tall purple geodes from Brazil. Tables loaded with South American rocks and African fossils crowded hotel courtyards. In the convention center besuited jewelers displayed so many rubies, emeralds, sapphires and tourmalines that the stones resembled jelly beans in a candy store window.

It was 50 years ago that nine local dealers first gathered at a Tucson elementary school to show their collections. The show may well have remained a local attraction without the involvement of Smithsonian curator Paul Desautels, who delivered the keynote address in 1961. Other museums and serious collectors soon signed on, until the show became what Desautels, who died in 1991, described as the "New York Stock Exchange of the [mineral] world."

This year, Smithsonian experts returned from the show with 58 pieces that the museum bought or received as gifts. Their prize acquisitions? Twin alexandrite crystals from Brazil and a green tourmaline from Afghanistan. Still, says Post, "the excitement for me is what a dealer might pull out of his bag in the back of his car."

[cogitator]

My kids keep picking up rocks around the house. I wonder if any of them are worth five figures. (Probably not even if you include the two figures to the right of the decimal point.)

[cogitator]

** ping **

[Brainhose]

Geological joke of the week;
Two volcanoes walk into a bar. The third one says : "That must've hurt"