Shells and minerals

So, can you tell that I am feeling really fed up of grey days? Desperation once again leads to finding something at home to photograph, LOL.

A quick shot taken partly because I have barely set foot outside my front door the past month and partly because everyone is perhaps getting fed up with nothing but flower, bird, mushroom and snow photos on my phototsream, lol. I think I've identified this shell correctly, but I don't know exactly which type of Turban it is. It snowed again overnight and this morning, maybe 6" or so?

Just a shell that I have at home - thought the colours and shape were quite pretty.

"Striations are a product of a mineral's crystal habit. They can be very diagnostic and can even be an enhancement to the attractiveness of a specimen. They are incorrectly referred to as scratches, especially on transparent crystals. The most common cause of striations are the convergence or juxtaposition of two crystal faces. One of the faces gets truncated or "overtaken" by the other, but manages to leave its mark in the form of an almost imperceptible edge or stria. This edge is repeated again and again as the mineral grows and can fill an entire face with these tiny edges or striations. Generally striations are parallel, but some are triangular or even crossed. Striations are generally common, but the best examples of striations are on the minerals quartz, pyrite, apophyllite, tourmaline, sphalerite and the feldspars, but there are many others. Pyrite has striations on its cubic faces that are caused by faces that are not usually on the crystal at the time. Pyrite's striations are caused by a juxtaposition of two pyritohedron faces on the cube face. Generally the pyritohedron faces are not even formed on the typical cube habit, but their striations are there as straight lines. It is interesting to notice that the striations on one side of the cube are perpendicular to the striations on the other side (shown in the photo below)." www.galleries.com/minerals/property/striatio.htm en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrite

The largest of these tiny crystals is maybe half an inch tall - can't for the life of me remember if they are Quartz crystals or something else. I think they came from one of the mines in India, many years ago. Feels a little strange to be posting this kind of crystal at this time of the year - normally, I would be posting ice crystals from an overnight frost! Not as sharp as I wanted, but it was a heavily overcast day yesterday (with a weather advisory in effect), and there was absolutely no light in my place.

Well, not exactly, but that is what this image makes me think of : ) Should have saved this photo of tiny (maybe half inch tall) Quartz crystals to post on a day with heavy snow and bitterly cold temperatures. Not too organized at the moment! If you are living in a world of white with frigid temps at the moment, hope this colour warms you up.

The actual size of this fossil Trilobite is roughly three-quarters of an inch. When my friend, Linda, sent me 400+ photos of things that had belonged to my brother and my parents, I was thrilled to bits to notice this Trilobite, as I didn't have one of my own, and so asked her to send it to me with all the other things. Can't remember where this came from - suspect we may have given it to my mother or my brother, many years ago. I'm pretty sure it's not one that I collected decades ago, when I was still living in England and in HIgh School, studying Geology. I remember well going to the Wren's Nest, Dudley, a well-known fossil site. "Trilobites (meaning "three lobes") are a well-known fossil group of extinct marine arthropods that form the class Trilobita. The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record defines the base of the Atdabanian stage of the Early Cambrian period (526 million years ago), and they flourished throughout the lower Paleozoic era before beginning a drawn-out decline to extinction when, during the Devonian, almost all trilobite orders, with the sole exception of Proetida, died out. Trilobites finally disappeared in the mass extinction at the end of the Permian about 250 million years ago. The trilobites were among the most successful of all early animals, roaming the oceans for over 270 million years." From Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilobite

Needed to have thoughts of a lovely warm ocean this afternoon, after a very COLD two-hour + walk in a local park this morning. Thought this image felt warm and sunny, though the shell was photographed in my kitchen, LOL. It's around -28C (-18F) today, without windchill added. Five brave little Black-capped Chickadees were all we saw. All the other birds either had more sense that we had, or else they were up at the garden feeders in the gardens that edge the park. Since people are no longer allowed to feed the birds in the park, they are now being "pulled" out of their natural environment and are still being fed by human beings.

I'm not sure, but I think this is natural Copper, with some kind of small crystals that have formed inside. Originally from India (I believe) and bought many years ago, when we lived in Oman, from an Indian guy who often returned to his native India and brought back all sorts of amazing minerals, which he then sold. I always looked forward immensely to seeing all his new, beautiful minerals.