Today’s stone from Gemstone Beach is a small hematite jasper. Such stones can occasionally be found along the coast of Te Waewae Bay – I often find at least one each fossick, sometimes as many as three or four. The silver and black of the hematite seems to make the red iron oxide more intense.
As Britannica notes, hematite is a heavy and relatively hard oxide mineral, ferric oxide (Fe2O3). It makes up the most important iron ore because of its high iron content (70%) and its abundance. Its name is derived from the Greek word for “blood,” alluding to its red colour. I recently read the following comment made by Tim Weglarz on the “Great Lakes Rocks & Minerals” Facebook Group: “The grey metallic bands and red coloration… of the jasper is from hematite. When hematite occurs as megascopic flakes, it is opaque and metallic. When it occurs as microscopic flakes dispersed in silica, it is translucent and blood red… The red jasper… has much smaller amounts of much finer grained hematite than the opaque metallic bands.”
Go to Stone of the Day #9.
Go to Post One of the Stone of the Day Series for November.
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