While classifying some material for the sluice, I found this river washed stone that is quite heavy. It's a little larger than a golf ball, elongated. I could see some reddish/pinkish translucent material in the black/yellow matrix. I decided to cut a cross section from it. The cross section is about 1/8 inch thick and my photo is blurry, but the translucent material color is accurate. Any ideas?

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Cross section.

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My thoughts are.... huge Garnet!

That's the rock I showed you on CC a couple of weeks ago.

Yes, I recognized it.... you think it's Garnet? You should do a Simple Specific Gravity Test. That would help narrow things down.
Pyrope Garnet has a specific gravity of 3.5 - 3.6

edit: when you go to that link scroll to the bottom and look at that giant smokey he is holding!

Wow!, that is a specimen. My Grandpa back in the 50's worked for the Montana Highway department, they were building a road somewhere in the Mountains, and he told me when they cut into the mountain side, there were 4 foot long individual quartz crystals, too heavy to even pick up. He did have one that was about a foot long. Wish I knew where it was exactly.

He probably could have retired with a couple of those 4 footers!

Not sure what it is but that's a pretty color when held up to the light! Nice find!

I know this is old but I came across something I was reading that had a pic that looked very similiar to this and is was a dinosaur bone that had been turned to agate or something....sorry for my lack of specifics, Im still a rockhounding idiot. Ill try to find it again.


EDIT: Jeez I am an idiot, it was on CP!

http://www.coloradoprospector.com/forums/i...?showtopic=2227

Garnet. Nice size. Depending on where you found it, I'd be tracing back up stream to find a source.

Yup, I saw it first hand the day he found it... pretty sure it's Garnet. For sure the largest natural I've seen. Very river worn and dinged up so it's had a rough journey. It's a dark one but may be facet-worhy? How would a stone faceter go about determining how pure the interior is?

I found a garnet about pencil eraser size when I was at cc. They are around there for sure. I also was fooled for a second by the highway paint. I bet that gets everyone a time or two!