Geology: rocks, minerals, gems, and fossils

[mmarotta]

I got some of these kits as gifts when I was a kid and never thought much of them, but nevre threw them out.  Much later, taking my daughter to museums we would buy interesting rocks and gems and fossils at the museum shop.  She left them behind for me.  One of the coin dealers I knew came into a huge meteor collection and was active in that trade for several years disbursing it, and I bought one of each major kind -- iron; stony; chondrite.  Then, I discovered that achondrites have the same distribution of elements as life on Earth, so I added one of those. 

When I was working on my associate's in criminal justice, one of my instructors was a retired officer from Flint who said several times, "Cops don't spend enough time with dirt and glass."  So, after graduation, I returned an took a class in Local Geology.  We walked the campus and the mile or so nearby to study the ground underfoot.  Our class trip was to an abandoned quarry where we hunted for fossils.  Our goals were set as a lab assignment.  Michigan has a lot of Cambrian and Ordovician and we found lots of things 400 million years old.

[Larry]

I have a few nice stones in my medicine bag, which has been helping.
I like to take their photos.  : )