CompuServe Messages

#Mystery Specimens

    05-Dec-94 23:42:35
Sb: #Mystery Specimens
Fm: jerry dedrick 72767,2450
To: All
..Well, OK, this one is a well known, not at all a mystery specimen. It is 100% provably limonite. Blackish cubes, pseudomorphs after pyrite. The books tell me this is common, yet in my many years as a r-hound, I've never even heard of such a thing. Beautiful blackish brown specimens, perfect cubes, limonite. (Trace fluor., Doug, not any in the mineral…) We *all* have a limonite in our collections. I perhaps recall discussions to remove the dread beast. BUT have any of you seen such a thing? Cubic pseudomorphs??? I've never seen such. Not in Harvard, not in the Smithsonian. Comment? Discussion? (FWIW, the specimens/news comes from a person who is not versed in the ways of rocks. Please answer to her in a non-technical fashion, so she understands WHAT exactly we are dealing with in Maryland? Not sure I'm up on this myself…JayDee the Lost