Chrissy is author of the Tumble and Polish Blog. She and her dog Ohla met me at Gemstone Beach at 11.30am. The sun was shining, there was very little wind, and the temperature was nine degrees, rising to 12 degrees when we finished just under four hours later.
The Taunoa Stream was still high. The tide was just low enough for us to ford the stream down near the waves, where it widened and was shallower. However, the swiftness of the current meant I got some water in one gumboot. We made our way down to the Waimeamea River before turning back. Chrissy found quite a few hydrogrossular garnets and I tended to specialise in spotting nice trace fossil stones today. No poppy jaspers appeared. We both had heavy backpacks by the time we got back to the carpark.
This Post features 14 of my finds today. We start with five trace fossil argillite stones. In the first specimen, the traces are raised and well-defined, having worn away at a slower rate than the rest of the stone:
The second and third trace fossil stones are green with large light coloured traces, larger than is usual for Gemstone Beach:
The fourth is a dark argillite, again with well-defined traces:
The fifth is a light-gray stone busy on both sides with traces:
Many of these traces are known as “protovirgularia” – a series of chevron-shapes. For more on this type of trace fossil, see “I is for Ichnogenus Protovirgularia” and “The Tattooed Rock, The Trace Fossils… Revisiting Gemstone Beach’s Trace Fossil Stones”.
Among my other finds was this small (three centimetres long) amygdaloidal stone. Tiny gas bubbles in an igneous stone are infilled by minerals left behind from super-heated water (as briefly explained in “A is for Amygdaloidal”; also see “November 2023 Polished Stones: Stone of the Day #21”):
This small green stone could also be amygdaloidal, but it is more likely that the “spots” are crystals:
The next stone is a lot larger, seven centimetres long. There’s some really interesting mineral patches in it:
A similar shaped stone, slightly smaller, perhaps a quartzite:
Maybe also a quartzite(?) with a different kind of interesting detail:
Three brown-coloured stones but of very different character – maybe an iron-stained quartz, another kind of quartz I called “sugar quartz”, and a small hydrogrossular garnet:
Finally, a small veined stone that I think may be a jasper:
I pick up stones that catch my eye, that I want to tumble polish, and it is not often easy for me to identify them, given my limited knowledge and the great diversity of individual specimens.
Part 11 is “Eight Back Beach Finds”. The Index to the first ten Posts in this Series can be found here.
Both Ohla & I had a great fossick with you today! There were some fabulous finds between the two of us. Unfortunately all Ohla found was a rather pungent smell that accompanied us on the way home!