WOW!! This is one gorgeous emerald crystal. Trace elements give the green colour to this variety of the mineral beryl. #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

The Guess the Gem answer is indicolite!! It’s the blueish variety of the mineral elbaite of the tourmaline group. #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

Guess the Gem time!! What mineral, variety, or group do you think these gems are? Hint: this variety’s name derives from its colour. #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

A lovely disc of fool’s gold which is the mineral pyrite!! #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

Can you see the dragonfly-like insect in this rock? It’s a Mischoptera, a Paleozoic insect!! #FossilFriday ⚒️🧪

The answer to this Guess the Gem is analcime!! This one is from Mont Saint-Hilaire, where massive crystals have been found. #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

Another Guess the Gem!! What mineral do you think this gem is? Hint: it forms a series with pollucite. #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

Grape chalcedony, made up of quartz and moganite, from Indonesia. Another one that looks like candy, but no eating!! #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

Museums hold collections for a reason: “Perhaps, he says, the next big breakthrough in charting our solar system’s deepest history won’t come from exploring some distant world but rather from studying samples of space rocks …from a drawer in a museum.” www.scientificamerican.com/article/rare...

Look at the colours in these opal nodules!! These are in rhyolite, a type of volcanic rock. #MineralMonday (well Mineraloid Monday) #VolcanoMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪🌋

When we want to know what the rocks are under our towns, we use a special drill that can collect long cylinders of rock hundreds of feet below the surface. This core, collected under Reading, punched through a fossil layer, scooping up ancient shells and even a beautiful sea urchin! #fossilfriday

These skull pieces of Mosasaurus hoffmanni make up the first Mosasaur skull found all the way back in 1780!! #FossilFriday⚒️🧪

The answer to the Guess the Gem is padparadscha sapphire!! This is the pink orange variety of sapphire, the more commonly blue variety of the mineral species corundum. #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

Guess the Gem time!! What mineral or variety do you think this gem is? Hint: this variety is typically associated with the colour blue. #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

Check out this quartz on chalcopyrite from Cornwall, UK. #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

Cumbria, England has some beautiful calcites! 😍 (Vid description: My left hand in a blue nitrile glove slowly rotating a cluster of transparent calcite crystals with some red iron staining on grey hematite) #MineralMonday #minerals

The answer to this Guess the Gem is topaz!! Pink is not as common as other colours of topaz. #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

Guess the Gem!! What mineral do you think all these gems are? Hint: some colour varieties fade in exposure to light. #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

I’ll share another bright mineral for Mineral Monday: check out this pyromorphite!! It’s from Daoping, China. #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

Did you know the gigantic horns of the fossil Arsinoitherium zitteli are hollow?!? #FossilFriday⚒️🧪

The answer for the gem at the centre of the Polish Eagle from Louis XIV’s collection is the garnet species grossular variety hessonite!! There are many colourful mineral species of garnet. #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

A Guess the Gem for you this week!! What mineral group, species, or variety do you think the large central gem is? Hint: commonly mistaken for a more well known red variety of another mineral species. #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

Brightly coloured minerals are a lot of fun!! This botryoidal smithsonite looks like some sort of rounded candy. But don’t eat it!! #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

Mammoth hair is pretty cool, this is more than 12000 years old!! #FossilFriday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪🦣

The answer to this Guess the Gem is vesuvianite!! This mineral was named after the volcano Mount Vesuvius, whose eruption destroyed Pompeii. #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

Time for a Guess the Gem!! What mineral do you think these gems are? Hint: it’s named after a very famous volcano in Italy. #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

Some gorgeous deep red dogtooth rhodochrosites from Uchucchacua Mine, Peru. Always loved seeing treasures like this!! #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

The cool skull of the huge ”shield lizard”, Scutosaurus karpinskii, from the Permian. #FossilFriday⚒️🧪

Quite the vibrant ruby!! Ruby is a variety of the mineral species corundum. #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

A handful of fold. Always fun to come across cool samples!! #FridayFold #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

One of my favourites!! You might be used to seeing cubes of fool’s gold but sometimes pyrite is more pyramidal in shape. #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

A stunning melding of palaeontology and mineralogy (well mineraloid-ology) in this opalized plesiosaur vertebra. Isn’t it gorgeous? #FossilFriday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

A bow tie!! This is a classic form of the zeolite mineral stilbite. #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

Happy #FoldFriday and have a nice weekend! ⚒️🧪 Photo from Kirkeporten, Norway. #photography

The roaring Tyrannosaurus rex with its tiny arms. #FossilFriday ⚒️🧪🦖

The latest eruption at Kilauea appears to be starting! We should see large lava fountains soon. Tune in live here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXKu...

For this holiday Mineral Monday, I present an itty bitty egg shaped from fluorite. #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

Happy Geologists’ Day!!! Geology is for everyone, especially those who love cool rocks and minerals like this quartz!!! #GeoscienceBluesky #GeologistsDay

I just saw that it’s Geologists Day today!!! To share my excitement about geology, here is one of my favourite types of rock: obsidian!! This is a thin polished slice showing flow banding. #GeologistsDay #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

Happy International Geologist's Day! Now for real. Below are the Easter-most igneous rocks out there. The orbicular granite slabs near the Department of the Earth Sciences in Uppsala University. 🧪 ⚒️ #Geology

the Eye of Sauron watching us survey for endangered cacti. #fossilfriday #triassicpark 🧪🦖

Brecciated Catoctin Formation in thin section ⚒️

The answer is the tourmaline group!! There are numerous mineral species in this group and a variety of colours! #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

Triple Guess the Gem time!! What mineral group do you think these three gems are? Hint: the cross sections of this group’s crystals would look triangular. #GuessTheGem #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪💎

So not quite a mineral for this week’s Mineral Monday, but this mineraloid opal is such a stunner. #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

The extinct American lion (Panthera atrox), found across North America, was bigger than the lions we see today. #FossilFriday ⚒️🧪

The Society of Mineral Museum Professionals has just joined Bluesky!!! Happy to join this network for mineral and museum news and geoscience discussions! #MineralMonday #MuseumMonday

Have you ever seen mica in the shape of a star? Muscovite is more commonly seen as books of near hexagonal layers. #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪

Skull of the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus). A species which, unsurprisingly, have been found a lot in caves. #FossilFriday ⚒️🧪

I love round specimens, especially snowball-like ones!! This is suolunite, a rare mineral. #MineralMonday #GeoscienceBluesky ⚒️🧪