This “Hall of Fame” features stones that I have personally collected and/or tumble polished, that I particularly value for some reason. Stones will be added to it from time to time.
***
NUMBER ONE: AGATISED FOSSIL CORAL FROM GEMSTONE BEACH (Added 24 February 2023)
This very rare fossil coral stone was found by me in June 2020 (see “Day Fifteen, Eighth Visit to Gemstone Beach” in this Post). I was fossicking with my sister Helen, who walked over to show me a stone she had found. We were discussing what kind of stone it might be when I looked down and spotted a stone with faint unusual markings. I picked it up, put it in my bag, and continued my conversation. Looking at it carefully later, I saw that the markings were quite distinct, and some internet searching revealed it to be a type of fossil coral. The details of that research are reported in this Post, a contribution to an alphabetical series run by the Facebook Group “New Zealand Lapidary, Rocks, Minerals, Fossils”. Malcolm Luxton, author of “Agates of New Zealand”, has mentioned in that Facebook Group that the stone is “agatised coral”. The stone is 4 cm long, 3 cm wide and 2 cm at its thickest. Upon tumbling, it polished very well, taking an excellent shine. I fossick often at Gemstone Beach, and the nearby stretch of beach on Te Waewae Bay, but have not seen another such stone. I have also not yet heard of any similar stones being found there either.
***
NUMBER TWO: MOSSY JASPER FROM SEADOWN BEACH, KAKANUI (Added 24 February 2023)
This is the most colourful and interesting of all the jaspers I have found. I spotted it on the beach in February 2021. I recall clearly how it was just sitting on top of a bunch of smaller stones, wet and glistening in the sun. See the entry for “Day Three, Friday 19 February” in this Post.
***
NUMBER THREE: HEMATITE JASPER FROM TIMARU SOUTH (Added 25 May 2023)
I found this stone on a beach south of Timaru on 6 March 2022. I picked it up just before leaving the beach and initially put it back down because of its size and its battered character. However, after a few steps I went back to pick it up again as I thought it would be a good candidate for tumbling by my friend Tracey Kidd who lives near Christchurch – she has a tumbling barrel larger than my largest 12lb one. Tracey went ahead and tumbled it successfully. The polished stone is 7.5 cm long, 4.5 cm high, and 2.5 cm at its widest tapering to 1 cm at its narrowest. It’s heavy, weighing 20 grams. It has a few small holes in it as it started out in a bit of a mangled condition. But it polished very well, thanks to Tracey’s work. In fact, the shine on it is so good that it is difficult to photograph without reflections interfering, even in bright direct sunlight. Hematite is a dense and relatively hard iron oxide that is quite abundant in nature. Jasper is an opaque variety of cryptocrystalline quartz, and its often brick-red to brownish-red colour is due to the presence of hematite. I have found and tumble-polished quite a few smaller hematite jaspers of various kinds, especially brecciated and orbicular. I have noticed that when a jasper contains significant quantities of the dark silvery kind of hematite, its red is especially intense and bright. This hematite jasper stone, after spending a few months with Tracey, sitting amongst other stones on her table, now resides with me on a cabinet shelf alongside the other members of the Hall of Fame.
***
NUMBER FOUR: TRACE FOSSIL IN ARGILLITE FROM GEMSTONE BEACH (Added 8 August 2023)
This a reasonably small flat trace fossil stone found on Gemstone Beach a few years ago. It is about 3.5 cm tall and 3.5cm wide, and only about 4mm to 6 mm thick. The trace shape on it consists of a number of chevrons in a sinuous J. To my mind, it is an excellent representative of its kind. Such traces are the fossilised burrows or tracks of some animal left in ocean floor sediments in the Permian Era (250 to 300 million years ago). The host rock tends to be argillite. I have found many such stones along the south coast of the South Island, especially between Riverton Aparima and Gemstone Beach at Orepuki, but am aware of them being found elsewhere as well, including the North Island. I tumble polish trace fossil stones lightly, with just one fine grit tumble before a polish tumble, in order to preserve the traces. Note that there are a range of different kinds of trace fossil stones with burrows and tracks in them in New Zealand, including those found along the Kaikoura Coast often referred to as “zoophycos”.
TumbleStone Blog contains a Series of four Posts on these trace fossil stones which records the progress of my research on them – the start of this Series is a Post from July 2019. “The Tattooed Rock, The Trace Fossils…” is a March 2023 Post that effectively provides a brief summary of the Series, along with some additional information. In mid-2020, I compiled a small photo-book “The Trace Fossil Stones of Gemstone Beach”, and the stones often feature in my Calendars (such as the 2020 TumbleStone Calendar). The stones appear regularly in a range of other Posts, from Stones of the Day (such as here, here, and here) to fossick Posts (such as here and here) to alphabetical Series (see here). It is fitting that a representative goes into the Hall of Fame.
