I participated this year in the Secret Santa Rock Exchange, wherein I shipped out a mystery rock to a random person, and got back a mystery rock from another random person. What fun!
My mystery rock has folds in it!
It’s from Matt Bruseke at Kansas State University. Check it out:
Matt writes that this is
a piece of the Silver City rhyolite, from the Owyhee Mountains, Idaho. The sample comes from a rhyolite lava and is ~16.0-16.3 Ma… I collected this piece while we were sampling the lava for geochemistry/petrography because of the 3D nature of the flow folding that is present in the rock… I couldn’t resist!
So cool! I can’t resist it either!
Some more photos of other faces of the sample:
Matt actually sent me two rocks: the second was a Kansan kimberlite, as a bonus. (That’s the advantage of USPS flat rate shipping – you can cram as many rocks in the box as you can fit!) The Secret Santa Rock Exchange is the coolest thing I’ve done in a while – I recommend it to all for the 2020 holiday season!
Happy Friday, Happy #AGU19, and Happy Holidays!
Beautiful rock. What “mystery rock” did you send to your random person?
Can’t say… They can reveal it if they want, but that’s up to them, not me….