GeologyRocksLooks Like Fist Sized Shiny Jet Black Gold Nuggets That Are Extremely Heavy
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Sounds very likely that they
Thu, 09/15/2011 - 21:49Sounds very likely that they may be iron/nickle meteorites. Shame you didn't take them if they are FeNi meteorites. They sell for a tidy sum.
However a picture would be useful to confirm. If you didn't take one google iron/nickle meteorites and compare. Please write back in here to let us know.
John
“Civilisation exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.” - Will Durant
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Fri, 09/16/2011 - 02:02Thanks for the suggestion. I googled iron/nickel meteorites but none of the pictures looked like my find. Just picture a fist-sized gold nuggett with a shiny bowling ball black luster coating. They came in all shapes and sizes, some much bigger and others were smaller. The fist sized one was extraoidinarily heavy, so heavy you would not want to carry it along even a short trail.
I will return to the area and look for the exact site as soon as I can. There were a lot of them much bigger than the one I picked up just lying along the side of that isolated stream. I wonder if they are still there?
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Sorry, picturing a fist
Fri, 09/16/2011 - 07:06Sorry, picturing a fist sized gold nugget is beyond my comprehension! I don't think a nugget of those dimensions has ever been found in the British Isles, certainly not above ground. (Do you know Gus?).
If they don't look like iron nickle meteorites but are very heavy and black, it actually leaves very few minerals which 'are fist sized but you wouldn't want to carry very far'.
It could be that whatever it is, has weathered to produced the black shiney surface, but specific gravity-wise it leave platinum, lead (galena), gold (doesn't get a weathered skin does it?), iron (after extraction - I have some cannon balls which are about 2x fist size and I don't carry them far, but try google-ing hematite which is botroidal in form - used to be called 'mammillary' until the PC brigade decided that might be offensive!), baryte (comes in many forms and is known as heavy spar, but I don't know of a shiney black forms) .
I am well aware that rocks/stones in deserts do get polished by wind blown grits.
There are other 'heavy minerals' which are seen in the 'tail' when gold panning. These include certain garnets and illmanite, the latter is steel grey to black, but I was under the impression that it only forms as crystals scattered in a matrix and weathers out and is brittle enough to break up into the tiny bits we see in gold pans.
John
“Civilisation exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.” - Will Durant
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Limonite is usually dull
Fri, 09/16/2011 - 22:30Limonite is usually dull with a powdery surface, often just crumbling apart. However I think that is due to moisture and then rusting, so it may be very different in dry desert conditions.
John
“Civilisation exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.” - Will Durant
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Looks Like Fist Sized Shiny Jet Black Gold Nuggets That Are Extremely Heavy
Submitted by homebuyer on Sun, 09/11/2011 - 05:01.I was using a metal detector in a remote part of California many years ago when I came across the side of a stream that had a bunch of fist sized shiny jet black rocks that looked exactly like gold nuggets just lying there. I mean exactly. I remember thinking how could gold nuggets be black. They were so heavy that I didn't feel like lugging them back to my car, so I just left them. I would have returned there soon afterward but since I was preparing to move out of state at the time I just dismissed the find. I have returned to the area several times over the last few years in search of them but I have not been able to locate the site.
This is one of those things that can gnaw away at you over the years. I have not been able to find a picture of anything like them anywhere. I just cannot get over how much they looked liked and felt heavy like gold nuggets, but they were so big and the wrong color (they did not look like glass). Does anyone know what these rocks could have been.