How is your day going? Today I have found the first record of #Argiope trifasciata from #Tuscany, close to where I live. This #spider likes arid environments and it is spreading north as the #climate warms. Closest observations to this one are from Corsica, Sardinia and Naples. 🕷️🦋 #nature

Another cutie pie today ❤️ ⚒️ #geology #tectonics

##tectonictuesday Just polishin' the good stuff #geology ⚒️

#MineralMonday Calcite crystals in the best mineralogy museum in the world: in the field. Antignano, Leghorn, Italy ⚒️ #geology #minerals

I have been offline and not posting for too long. Time to start posting here again!

Olivine is my second fav mineral after pyropic garnet and am super loving this forsteritic olivine ring. Peridotite xenolith in phonotephrite is from the classic location of the San Carlos volcanic field. #olivine #xenolith #peridotite

Yokonami melange, a paleo-megathrust, and so, so much chert, near Kure, Shikoku Island, Japan

The characters of the "disaster preparedness for the next Nankai earthquake" on the tosaden, the historic tram of Kochi. On the left, "tsunamiman and jishinman", the villains of our story (jishin = earthquake in Japanese) ⚒️ #geology #kochi #japan #nankai #earthquake #tsunami

Mind blowing rocks of Rosso Levanto: mantle peridototes that were carbonated and then weathered on the ocean floor of the Piemont-Ligiria ocean.

The Japanese leave nothing to chance

There's truly no shortage of stunning leaf-footed bugs. This species is Pachylis laticornis! 📷 lendebeer on iNaturalist 📍 Venezuela 🔗: www.inaturalist.org/observations... #ObservationOfTheDay

Happyness is where the kanji are

Feels like home ❤️

Home... home again

If you post stuff like that, you are more than welcome!

Just deleted my science twitter and made a bsky... My feed was getting full of crazy stuff, and I pretty much just want to see things about rocks, earthquakes, and fluffy dogs/cats. Wassup?

I am travelling and I am bored, so I'll post a random marble pic from my phone.

One of the samples that I was working on today, a hefty slab of "Duke Stone" metaignimbrite from the Piedmont of North Carolina. This is the rock that was used to build the Gothic architecture of Duke University. Made in a pre-Appalachian volcanic eruption, it got squeezed as Pangaea was assembled.⚒️

Always fun to cut a new rock and discover gorgeous deformation structures 😍 #geology ⚒️

Dartmoor, Hay Tor, some rather splendid megacrystic alkali feldspars in th4e granite that are very visible on the highest part of the Tor.

Gabbro, grasshopper or gabbro-colored grasshopper? ⚒️🪲 #geology #nature #insects #orthoptera

Olivine sand with some basalt grains. South Point, Hawaii. Collected prior to current laws prohibiting removal. #arenophile #sand #olivine #greensand

For #FridayFold I think you may like these refolded folds I just visited that are exposed in the Farma river valley close to Siena! ⚒️ #geology #structuralgeology #tectonics

Today I have found the most aggressive spider we have in Italy, and I decided to wave a stick at it until it showed me its cute little fangs. Look! What a cutie pie it is ❤️ 🕷️ Cheiracanthium punctorium - yellow sac spider #nature #spiders

PSA on links: On Bluesky, there’s no limit to the number of links you can share, and they will receive the same visibility as your other posts 💙

Today's M8.8 (orange circle) and the 1952 M9.0 epicentral locations, separated by only 73 years. I wouldn't have thought that possible! Average recurrence intervals don't tell the full story. ⚒️

I am out there into the wild right now

For #MineralMonday I want to share some sexy #garnet grains being replaced by #chlorite in retrogressed #eclogite Dozan river, Besshi, Ehime, Japan ⚒️ #geology #minerals

Took some photos at a cliff diving competition near Locarno yesterday and was very impressed with these divers! The cliffs themselves in a river bed were also very cool to look at. ⚒️

Is #ShorteningSaturday a thing? If not, why not? Thin, short wavelength, ptygmatic folded layers within longer wavelength folded layers, Ardalanish beach, Mull ⚒️(Locality 1.19, Excursion 1(C), Moine guide)

You want to see some sexy #cleavage on the beach? Crosshaven, Cork County 🇮🇪 #fridayfold

#Spinel #Lherzolite Honolulu Volcanics peridotites (but not pyroxenites) are notable for their lack of hydrous minerals suggesting cryptic metasomatism. Olivines of the most Si02-undersaturated lavas/pyroclastics have rather larnitic rims, something my mind associates with carbonatite metasomatism.

Melilite nephelinite was erupted at Pali Kilo and Kūʻau rejuvenation vents, they are geochemically extremely similar and both flows were initially considered the same flow. These here look quite picritic. Mōkapu vents of the Honolulu Volcanics. #geoscience #geology #picrite #olivine

Weird rock. This is a sheared pegmatite from Elba. It may look like a regular rock, but those plagioclase grains float in a groundmass of Li-mica (lepidolite) and there are many elbaite crystals around. I suspect the K-feldspar is what they call 'rubicline', A Rb-rich feldspar.

Stilpnomelane schist from Nagatoro, Saitama, Japan; OPL, FOV=ca.1 mm #thinsection #petrology #petrography #polarizingmicoscope スティルプノメレン片岩の偏光顕微鏡写真

#FridayFold folded Paleozoic metasedimentary rocks (phyllites and metasandstones) along the eastern coast of Punta Bianca, La Spezia. Those are second phase folds, you can see the earlier foliation parallel to bedding folded by these recumbent folds. #geology #structuralgeology #tectonics ⚒️

Probably the best individual thin section ever produced. John Faithfull's slice of the olivine cumulate from Unit 5 of the Rùm layered intrusion. #ThinSectionThursday

Sillimanite; rutile; garnet; reddish biotite; and somewhat altered plagioclase. XP: garnet is black, sillimanite is gray, and feldspar shows some exsolution. Contributed by Matt Kohn. You can contribute too! Send images and short caption to akoziol1 at udayton dot edu. #thinsectionthursday

Happy #ThinSectionThursday all! Today's entry is a 2.5x view of scoria from Mt. Ijen's 1817 CE phreatomagmatic eruption 🌋. This is the most crystal rich entry in the eruption sequence; multiple crystal populations present, composed of plag >> 2 pyr > ol. Note: this thin section is 50 μm thick!

#ThinSectionThursday A transverse section of a brachiopod with geopetal internal sediment. 3 generations of calcite cement. 1st - calcite dog tooth spar; 2nd calcite rhombs; 3rd blocky ferroan calcite. Stained with K ferricyanide and Alizarin Red S. Mid Ordovician- Alabama, U.S.A.

Am I alone in this room? I feel like more should contribute to trends like #ThinSectionThursday #FridayFold or #RockInTuesday . I know that many of us remained on X, and here may feel like there is no engagement, but if we never try, our community will not grow again! ⚒️ #geology

🎉 Our new #PrePrint, "Fault stability and reactivation risks in the Tulu Moye geothermal field, Main Ethiopian Rift," is now available. Crucial insights for sustainable #GeothermalEnergy. 👇 #FaultMechanics #RockMechanics #StructuralGeology @derekkeir.bsky.social; @earth-science.bsky.social

#ThinSectionThursday Barroisite - phengite - garnet schist, a retrogressed #eclogite from the Sanbagawa Belt of Japan ⚒️ #geology #thinsection #minerals

The recrystallized grains in a mylonite always give me a sense of peace. Don't ask me why.

Race in the mylonite. Muscovite vs tourmaline

A domino of white mica

Muscovite-out reaction, when mica is turned into a see of K-feldspars in between biotite grains. Cordierite and andalusite are also around. #geology #metamorphism ⚒️

PROBLEM: I am late for #RockInTuesday, early for #ThinSectionThursday and very early for #FridayFold . Should I post this on Wednesday? Folded quartzites in the contact aureole of the Monte Capanne pluton, Elba #geology ⚒️

Serpentinite that's becoming peridotite again, thanks to contact metamorphism

Granite photo stitching