If you like gemstones, keep reading about the easiest gemstones to find in rocks and creeks. Insider Monkey has recently published an interesting article about this topic. Gemstones have always attracted people with their shiny and myserious look.
Minerals and gemstones in rocks are formed in the process when magma or molten rock begins to cool, when some elements separate from the main mass and form crystals or separate entities. As for creeks, the material that forms the river bed consists of the surrounding material, and material that has been brought by water from the upstream. That means pebbles in creeks resemble the surrounding geology.
Now without a further ado let’s see what Insider Monkey has investigated for us. We have picked two gemstones from their list.
Tourmaline is the first one on our list. Tourmalines are minerals of boron silicate group, and are used as gemstones because of their clarity and very wide range of colors. Tourmaline minerals are found as accessory minerals in some rocks (mostly granite, pegmatite and gneiss), and can be found in alluvial deposits because they are very durable and resistant, but the most beautiful are those that form as individual crystals due to the hydrothermal processes. Because of a great variety of tourmaline (since they differ chemically, but have same crystalline structure) there are many varieties: rubelite, schorl, indicolite, Paraiba and many more (those are tourmaline gemological names and not real mineralogical terms). The second one is opal. Since we have noted that silicates are most common minerals, some of the easiest gemstones to find in rocks are exactly silicate gemstones. One of them is opal, amorphous silicate mineral. It occurs in many rocks as a product of low-temperature hydrothermal processes. There are many opal varieties, and the main opal gemstone resources are found in Australia.
For any further interesting information read Insider Monkey’s article about 20 easiest gemstones to find in rocks and creeks
