Geology In

What Are Organic Gemstones?

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Almost all gemstones are minerals with a crystalline structure. However, some gems are not really gemstones. Rather their origin is organic. This means that they formed from biological processes, whether animal or vegetable. Unlike other gemstones that are made of minerals, organic gemstones are renewable and in some cases can be farmed (like Pearls). <br />
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There are typically four classes of organic gemstones that are sought after for their natural appeal and rarity.  Though they are not as tough as gemstones made from minerals.  The four classes of organic gemstones are amber, coral, jet, and pearl.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Amber</span></h3>
Amber is a hard sap or resin from aged pine trees and is a organic gemstone.Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects. Amber is used in jewelry. Amber has been used as jewelry since the Stone Age, from 13,000 years ago.Amber occurs in a range of different colors. As well as the usual yellow-orange-brown that is associated with the color "amber", amber itself can range from a whitish color through a pale lemon yellow, to brown and almost black. Other uncommon colors include red amber (sometimes known as "cherry amber"), green amber, and even blue amber, which is rare and highly sought after. The most prized pieces contain inclusions of insects, plants or pyrite.<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <a href="http://www.geologyin.com/2016/05/types-of-amber.html" target="_blank">Read also: Pictures: Types of Amber</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Coral</span></h3>
The marine based gemstone which is made of calcium carbonate found below the vast oceans.  Corals are very small marine animals that live in huge colonies and extract calcium carbonate from the sea.  The corals use the calcium carbonate to build up its home up, around, and above itself.  When a generation of coral dies it dies so within its home, the new generation thus building on top of the old and so on.  This process produces the massive coral reefs you see today!  Gemstone corals appear semitransparent to opaque and the colors can be found white, pink, orange, red, violet and sometimes gold and black (horny organic substances that are not calcium carbonate).  Coral gems are used to make beads, carvings, cameos, and figurines.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Jet</span></h3>
Jet is a type of coal, a carbon and hydrocarbon mixed compound. Jet is not a mineral, but rather a mineraloid. It has an organic origin, being derived from decaying wood under extreme pressure. Jet is either black or dark brown, but may contain pyrite inclusions, which are of brassy colour and metallic lustre. Jet has also been known as black amber, as it may induce an electric charge like that of amber when rubbed. Jet has a Mohs hardness ranging between 2.5 and 4 and a specific gravity of 1.30 to 1.34. The refractive index of jet is approximately 1.66. Jet is found in two forms, hard and soft. Hard jet is the result of carbon compression and salt water; soft jet is the result of carbon compression and fresh water.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Pearl</span></h3>
The famous pearl is a organic gemstone and has been used as jewelry for thousands of years.  Pearls are made by mollusk animals( organic creatures enclosed within a shell) typically clams, mussels, and oysters. The soft tissue in the mollusc animal creates a mucus called nacre which hardens thus creating a pearl.  Pearl bearing molluscs can be found in both salt as well as fresh waters.  The salt water mollusc create organic gemstones of much higher value.  Where as the fresh water mollusc (clams and mussels) produce pearls for less desirable jewelry and decorations.  The perfect pearl is round but can come in any abstract shape (usually never rough shaped or with sharp edges). The color of a pearl varies from white, cream, light <a href="http://www.geologyin.com/2018/02/conch-pearl-only-natural-pink-pearl.html" target="_blank">rose</a>, <a href="http://www.geologyin.com/2018/02/conch-pearl-only-natural-pink-pearl.html" target="_blank">cream rose</a>, black, gray, bronze, blue, dark blue, green, dark green, purple, yellow, as well as violet.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ammolite </span></h3>
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<a href="http://www.geologyin.com/2017/03/its-like-nothing-else-on-earth-gemstone.html" target="_blank">Ammolite </a>is an opal-like organic gemstone.  It is made of the fossilized shells of ammonites, which in turn are composed primarily of aragonite, the same mineral contained in nacre, with a microstructure inherited from the shell. It is one of few biogenic gemstones; others include amber and pearl. Ammolite is also known as aapoak, gem ammonite, calcentine, and Korite. The chemical composition of ammolite is variable, and aside from aragonite may include calcite, silica, pyrite, or other minerals. Its crystallography is orthorhombic. Its hardness is 4.5–5.5, and its specific gravity is 2.60–2.85. Significant deposits of gem-quality ammolite are only found in the Bearpaw Formation that extends from Alberta to Saskatchewan in Canada and south to Montana in the USA.</div>
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Organic gemstones are formed naturally and are crafted into desired shapes.  Because the most beautiful of natures creations take time, the gemstones maintain their rare value.  For thousands of years the elegance of these organic gemstones grace jewelry and decorations all over the world.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Read also: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.geologyin.com/2018/03/types-of-iridescent-gemstones-minerals.html" target="_blank">Types of Iridescent Gemstones & Minerals</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.geologyin.com/2018/07/different-types-and-colours-of-moonstone.html" target="_blank">Different Types and Colours of Moonstone</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.geologyin.com/2017/01/types-of-mineral-inclusions-with-photos.html" target="_blank">Types of Mineral Inclusions with Photos</a></span></div>

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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-i81zWPAIYiY/W3GxWvvJIoI/AAAAAAAAQPQ/5rhc27Q_bw0gkyw3m-HgcMiYK_GeyvVgACLcBGAs/s1600/This%2BUnusual%2BMeteorite%2BFlew%2BAround%2Bin%2BSpace%2BBefore%2BEarth%2BWas%2BBorn%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The NWA 11119 meteorite is about the size of a baseball and is estimated to be 4.6 billion years old." border="0" data-original-height="697" data-original-width="1241" height="358" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-i81zWPAIYiY/W3GxWvvJIoI/AAAAAAAAQPQ/5rhc27Q_bw0gkyw3m-HgcMiYK_GeyvVgACLcBGAs/s640/This%2BUnusual%2BMeteorite%2BFlew%2BAround%2Bin%2BSpace%2BBefore%2BEarth%2BWas%2BBorn%2B%25281%2529.jpg" title="" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The NWA 11119 meteorite is about the size of a baseball and is estimated to be 4.6 billion years old.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Scientists say a weird, baseball-sized space rock studded with green crystals is “completely different” from any other known meteorite on Earth.</span><br />
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Scientists believe the solar system was formed some 4.6 billion years ago when a cloud of gas and dust collapsed under gravity possibly triggered by cataclysmic explosion from a nearby massive star or supernova. As this cloud collapsed, it formed a spinning disk with the sun in the center.<br />
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Since then scientists have been able to establish the formation of the solar system piece by piece. Now, new research has enabled scientists from The University of New Mexico, Arizona State University and NASA's Johnson Space Center to add another piece to that puzzle with the discovery of the oldest-ever dated igneous meteorite.<br />
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The research titled, Silica-rich volcanism in the Early Solar System Dated at 4.565 Ga, was published today in Nature Communications. This research provides direct evidence that chemically evolved silica-rich crustal rocks were forming on planetsimals within the first 10 million years prior to the assembly of the terrestrial planets and helps scientists further understand the complexities of planet formation.<br />
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"The age of this meteorite is the oldest, igneous meteorite ever recorded," said Professor and Director of the Institute of Meteoritics Carl Agee. "Not only is this just an extremely unusual rock type, it's telling us that not all asteroids look the same. Some of them look almost like the crust of the Earth because they're so light colored and full of SiO2. These not only exist, but it occurred during one of the very first volcanic events to take place in the solar system."<br />
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The research started to unfold at UNM when graduate student and lead author Poorna Srinivasan, asked Agee for ideas on her Ph.D. thesis. Agee had a yet-to-be studied crustal rock that was found in a sand dune in Mauritania by a nomad that he received from a meteorite dealer. The rock was lighter in color than most meteorites and was laced with green crystals, cavities and surrounded by quench melt. He gave the sample to Srinivasan who began to study the mineralogy of the rock, Northwest Africa (NWA) 11119.<br />
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Using an electron microprobe and a CT (computed tomography) scan at UNM and Johnson Space Center facilities, Srinivasan started to examine the composition and mineralogy of the rock. Srinivasan started to note the intricacies of NWA 11119 and noted the unusual light-green fusion crust, silica mineral-rich achondrite meteorite containing information substantially widening scientific knowledge involving the range of volcanic rock compositions within the first 3.5 million years of solar system creation.<br />
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"The mineralogy of this rock is a very, very different from anything that we've worked on before," said Srinivasan. "I examined the mineralogy to understand all of the phases that comprise the meteorite. One of the main things we saw first were the large silica crystals of tridymite which is a similar to the mineral quartz. When we conducted further image analyses to quantify the tridymite, we found that the amount present was a staggering 30 percent of the total meteorite - this amount is unheard of in meteorites and is only found at these levels in certain volcanic rocks from the Earth."<br />
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Part of Srinivasan's research also involved trying to figure out through chemical and isotopic analyses what body the meteorite could be from. Utilizing oxygen isotopes done in collaboration with Dr. Karen Ziegler in UNM's Center for Stable Isotope (CSI) lab, she was able to determine that it was definitely extraterrestrial.<br />
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"Based on oxygen isotopes, we know it's from an extraterrestrial source somewhere in the solar system, but we can't actually pinpoint it to a known body that has been viewed with a telescope," said Srinivasan. "However, through the measured isotopic values, we were able to possibly link it to two other unusual meteorites (Northwest Africa 7235 and Almahata Sitta) suggesting that they all are from the same parent body - perhaps a large, geologically complex body that formed in the early solar system."<br />
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One possibility is that this parent body was disrupted through a collision with another asteroid or planetesimal and some of its ejected fragments eventually reached the Earth's orbit, falling through the atmosphere and ending up as meteorites on the ground - in the case of NWA 11119, falling in Mauritania at a yet unknown time in the past.<br />
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"The oxygen isotopes of NWA11119, NWA 7235, and Almahata Sitta are all identical, but this rock - NWA 11119 - stands out as something completely different from any of the over 40,000 meteorites that have been found on Earth," said Srinivasan.<br />
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Further, research using an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry was performed in the Isotope Cosmochemistry and Geochronology Laboratory (ICGL) at the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University to determine the precise formation age of the meteorite. The research confirmed that NWA 11119 is the oldest-ever igneous meteorite recorded at 4.565 billion years.<br />
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"The purpose of this research was to understand the origin and formation time of an unusually silica-rich igneous meteorite," says co-author and ASU's Center for Meteorite Studies director, Meenakshi Wadhwa. "Most other known igneous asteroidal meteorites have 'basaltic' compositions that have much lower abundances of silica - so we wanted to understand how and when this unique silica-rich meteorite formed in the crust of an asteroidal body in the early Solar System."<br />
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Most meteorites are formed through the collision of asteroids orbiting the sun in a region called the asteroid belt. Asteroids are the remains from the formation of the solar system formation some 4.6 billion years ago. The chemical composition ranges of ancient igneous meteorites, or achondrites, are key to understanding the diversity and geochemical evolution of planetary building blocks. Achondrite meteorites record the first episodes of volcanism and crust formation, the majority of which are basaltic.<br />
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"The meteorite we studied is unlike any other known meteorite," says co-author and ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration graduate student Daniel Dunlap. "It has the highest abundance of silica and the most ancient age (4.565 billion years old) of any known igneous meteorite. Meteorites like this were the precursors to planet formation and represent a critical step in the evolution of rocky bodies in our solar system."<br />
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"This research is key to how the building blocks of planets formed early in the solar system," said Agee. "When we look out of the solar system today, we see fully formed bodies, planets, asteroids, comets and so forth. Then, our curiosity always pushes us to, to ask the question, how did they form, how did the Earth form? This is basically a missing part of the puzzle that we've now found that tells us these igneous processes act like little blast furnaces that are melting rock and processing all of the solar system solids. Ultimately, this is how planets are forged."<br />
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The study was published in the journal  <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05501-0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nature Communications</a>.</span></i></u></div>

This Unusual Meteorite Flew Around in Space Before Earth Was Born

The NWA 11119 meteorite is about the size of a baseball and is estimated to be 4.6 billion years old. Scientists say a weird, basebal...

Magnitude 6.5 Earthquake Hits Alaska

Earthquakes, USA 7:06 PM

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The U.S. Geological Survey says that two earthquakes have hit Alaska.<br />
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The agency says that at 6:58 a.m. Sunday the earthquake struck an area 41.8 miles (67 kilometers) east of Kavik River Camp and 342.9 miles (551 kilometers) northeast of Fairbanks, the state’s second-biggest city.<br />
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The survey says the earthquake had a depth of about four-tenths of a mile (0.6 kilometers.)<br />
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At 7:14 a.m., a magnitude 5.1 earthquake hit an area farther north.<br />
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The USGS says the earthquake hit a spot about 340.1 miles (548.6 kilometers) northeast of Fairbanks.<br />
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The agency says that earthquake also had a depth of about four-tenths of a mile (0.6 kilometers.)<br />
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In January, a powerful undersea earthquake sent Alaskans fumbling for suitcases and racing to evacuation centers in the middle of the night after a cellphone alert warned a tsunami could hit communities along the state’s southern coast and parts of British Columbia. The magnitude 7.9 quake in the Gulf of Alaska triggered the alert.</div>
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Prelim M6.5 Earthquake northern Alaska Aug-12 14:58 UTC, updates <a href="https://t.co/zGz494xobs">https://t.co/zGz494xobs</a></div>
— USGS Big Quakes (@USGSBigQuakes) <a href="https://twitter.com/USGSBigQuakes/status/1028658174469926912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 12, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Prelim M5.5 Earthquake northern Alaska Aug-12 16:02 UTC, updates <a href="https://t.co/aiIaGZ1CiN">https://t.co/aiIaGZ1CiN</a></div>
— USGS Big Quakes (@USGSBigQuakes) <a href="https://twitter.com/USGSBigQuakes/status/1028674005308399617?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 12, 2018</a></blockquote>
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