Can you Dig? Geodes

After creating a weekly deal with our geode pendants & getting the chance to look at all these fantastic stone pendants, I wanted to take a moment to emphasize how truly unique this find is. Our geodes came from Mexico where we have worked closely with the miner for years on many projects. These small orbs are handpicked, sized and sorted. Each formed in an ocean floor volcano, which is now in Chihuahua, Mexico. Rarely are there ever two alike & why would you want them to be? With either or both crystal formations or addition of agate bands, the color range from white, to pinks, to red or light blue – maybe even black. I’m truly smitten. Can you tell?

In Tucson during the gem & mineral show companies haul in giant cathedral geodes - here are a few that are still in crates - these happen to be amethyst.

Smaller geodes can be "barreled" - the shelf in the background holds cut and polished agate geodes that can be used as home decor.

Here are a few more of the larger geodes - at this show there was a geode the size of a small truck, really, that was placed at the doors. We took pictures but apparently didn't archive them well. Ooops!

While I was looking up info on these pendants I ran across some info regarding how they are formed which is pretty interesting stuff. There are two theory’s on how these orbs are formed. One is formed in Lava & the other is formed in Dolomite. Since there is no easy way to explain how they are formed, here is a thorough explanation I picked up from ehow.com that I found to be quite interesting:


While experts don't know for certain how geodes are actually formed, there are theories among geologists about the processes that take place. There are generally two types of geodes. One geode is made out of lava. The other is made from dolomite, a limestone-like sedimentary rock. Each geode is created through different processes. All geodes, no matter how they are formed, must contain hollow bodies in which crystals can form.

Some geodes are formed out of molten lava rocks. After the molten rocks cool, they create gasses that, when dissolved, turn into bubbles. These bubbles turn into cavities once the rocks harden. The early stages of these cavities are called thunder eggs. According to experts, the minerals that form into crystals may have flowed into these cavities in two ways. Either the minerals could have come from the hot water flowing through the cracks in the lava rocks as they cooled, or they could have been deposited much later as mineral groundwater. However the convention minerals such as quartz are introduced into the thunder egg through a flow of water, thus creating the opportunity for crystals to form.

The formation of geodes from dolomite is much more complicated that those formed out of lava rocks. The theory of how dolomite geodes are formed came from geologist Robert Maliva in 1987. His theory goes that the geode cavity formed from a small, hard spheroid that later dissolved and became a cavity, a process that began over 350 million years ago in the warm, shallow waters that once covered what is now the central United States region. Lime sediments grew in the warm saltwater. When the saltwater interacted with sediments rich in calcite, the calcite metastasized into the minerals dolomite and anhydrite.

The anhydrite then turned into hard spheroid bodies inside the dolomite. Meanwhile, the dolomite changed from sediment into a hard rock. Anhydrite will dissolve even in the slightest amounts of acid in water. Thus, after acidic water was introduced, outer areas of the anhydrite broke away and were replaced with quartz, which were in the beginning only small fibers of crystal. The centers of the anhydrite bodies were then dispersed completely. Quartz was fed through the rock from water rich with minerals, forming the crystals that grow inside. Over time, the rocks disintegrated, leaving the dolomite to open the elements and causing it to dissolve. The hardened quartz then separated from the dolomite, turning into geodes formed on the ground.