Heather

Lochan na h-Achlaise, Rannoch Moor #Scotland #RannochMoor #GlenCoe #Highlands www.damianshields.com

Lochan na h-Achlaise, Rannoch Moor #Scotland #RannochMoor #GlenCoe #Highlands www.damianshields.com

Scars from the world's first deep sea mining test 50 years on Half a century after the world's first deep sea mining tests picked nodules from the seafloor off the US east coast, the damage has barely begun to heal.

Scars from the world's first deep sea mining test 50 years on

www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...

Or geologists… all those lovely rocks on the path need a quick glance…

Was really struggling with working today - turns out it’s Beltane, so I should really be leaping over bonfires and celebrating fertility rituals, which explains everything 🤣

Lovely Easter in Yorkshire, although I think I look happiest on the least sunny day 😂

An image of a rock in thin section, displaying crystals of various minerals (kyanite, sillimanite, muscovite, chlorite, plagioclase). A schistose texture is observed, with the muscovite being aligned and appearing to 'flow' from top right to bottom left of the image.

A nice schist with muscovite, kyanite/sillimanite, chlorite, and twinned plagioclase.

#thinsectionthursday #geology #science #minerals #rocks

🔬Microscopy Thursday!

🌿Did you know that plants can grow crystals? Here is a piece of oak with Ca-oxalates growing in its cells. In some plants, oxalate crystals form ~80% of their dry mass. In humans, they make kidney stones.

Sample provided by Dr Susanna Harris (University of Glasgow).

Another reason to love otters #pocketrocks #geology

The font in the baptistery of the Minster. It has a bowl of dark-red bastite serpentinite standing on legs of grey green tremolite serpentinite. It stands on a square plinth decorated with red and yellow encaustic tiles and a step of almost black serpentinite. The floor of the baptistery is also paved with colourful encaustic tiles.

Detail of the bowl of the font cut from a single piece of dark-red bastite serpentinite.

Cylindrical legs of the font in a grey green streaky tremolite serpentinite

Font at Doncaster Minster by George Gilbert Scott in two varieties of Cornish Serpentinite #fontsonfriday #urbangeology

Trump targets 'anti-American ideology' at Smithsonian museums The order says that "divisive narratives" must be purged from the US museums and research centres.

As a museum professional, this is worrying (but not surprising)
Trump targets 'anti-American ideology' at Smithsonian museums www.bbc.com/news/article...

A photomicrograph of a basalt between crossed polars. It is full of large colourful clinopyroxenes, some round grey vesicles, and some yellowy grey altered olivines. The groundmass is full of little plagioclase feldspars and iron oxides.

A local #ThinSectionThursday today. Clinopyroxene- and olivine-phyric basalt from Holyrood Park, Edinburgh. Location given as St Anthony's Chapel, so probably lava two or three of the Arthur's Seat lava succession.

"Dig from where we stand"

Four black rutile crystals running from upper left to lower right. The crystal above the center crystal of the three in line has a fracture. Above it is a broken crystal. They are on white matrix.

Rutile Ti⁴⁺O₂
Poudrette quarry (De-Mix quarry; Demix quarry; Uni-Mix quarry; Carrière Mont Saint-Hilaire; MSH), Mont Saint-Hilaire, La Vallée-du-Richelieu RCM, Montérégie, Québec, Canada
FOV = 3.77 mm
#1561
NFS
#minerals

This crazy #mineral (abhurite) occurs exclusively on tin ingots in shipwrecks!! 😮
It’s formed by the chemical reaction between tin & seawater.
This SEM image from @amgueddfacymru.bsky.social shows tin ingots coated with abhurite from the SS Liverpool, which sank off the coast of Anglesey in 1863.

Still one of my favourite typos: Dean Lomax & team are so immersed in their subject they're even starting to look like fossils…
(From science daily in 2018) #geology

At last, something we can do to defend #scientists in the US. Please sign if this resonates with your values. 🔬 👩🏻‍🔬
#geology

Daffodil hunt: The search for rare flowers lost from history As daffodils burst into bloom, experts want help in finding rare treasures hiding in plain sight.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Tiny blue-green crystals (there's a green coloured arrow stuck on the specimen to point these out) with some leaf-green illite and blue azurite on a matrix. From Bambollita Mine, Moctezuma, Sonora, Mexico. Specimen from the Natural History Museum, London's collections.

1 of #365Minerals 🧪⚒️

Quetzalcoatlite:
- Named after Quetzalcoatl, an Aztec and Toltec god of the sea, due to its sea-blue colour
- Forms in the oxidised zone of tellurium-bearing hydrothermal deposits #minerals
- This below is a co-type specimen (one of the specimens used to define the species)

I hear it’s almost time for some superb owls! Here’s one from 1508 by Albrecht Dürer.

A crisp and sunny morning here in #Charmouth, why not come along at 10am for our first beach clean of 2025!

Help us collect, sort and record rubbish for the Marine Conservation Society as part of citizen science and create a safer environment for our wildlife.

Meet us in the seafront car park!

Boglands are great!

Suspension Bridge xkcd.com/3048

Some beautiful Penrhyn slate in the @nhm-london.bsky.social evolution garden - with creatures & the excellent Earth science researcher who helped bring this real-rock timeline to life.

Look the the square window in the natural history #museum #evolution garden and what do you see?
A pterosaur!
As designed in 1875 and sculpted from terracotta to Alfred Waterhouse’s design.

#Tourmaline is probably my favourite #mineral.
It has so many varieties- like the lovely allochromatic Elbaite.
If copper-bearing, crystals can be a beautiful blue / green, like in this pegmatite.

Quintos pegmatite, Parelhas, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. #geology
📷 F. Brederodes (CC licence)

Stromatolites xkcd.com/3046

Pyramidal #witherite #crystals from Pennant Mine, St. Asaph, Clwyd.

Witherite (BaCO3) was first recorded in Wales from St.Asaph in 1810, where it was mined & used ‘for bleaching shoddy cloth’.

It appears in #Minecraft too!
NMW R.J. King Collection 📷 D.I. Green, © National Museum of Wales. #geology

January 28, 1903, birthday of Irish crystallographer Kathleen Lonsdale.
The rare carbon-modification Lonsdaleite, formed by high pressures & temperatures as experienced during an impact event, is named after her ☄💎
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathlee...

On Friday I gave a talk about our #urbannature project which I’ve led for @amgueddfacymru.bsky.social for the last 3 years. We’ve reached 2400 learners, aged 9 and 14, helping awaken their nature enthusiasm & creating advocates for the planet. #proud

66 million-year-old fossilised vomit discovered in Denmark Experts say the discovery will help them understand what animals were eating during the Cretaceous period.

66 million-year-old vomit discovered in Denmark www.bbc.com/news/article...