this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
71 points (98.6% liked)

Cool Rocks

373 readers
51 users here now

A place for:

Minerals are cool, too.

Be gneiss to each other

Please use posts for your rocks. Feel free to add more pictures and links to articles in the post text.

This place is building up fast and looking for another mod, someone who:

founded 1 week ago
MODERATORS
 

edit1: Some more photos of this selfsame rock through a micro scope (somewhere between 10x and 45x, didn't write it down)

and another feature I discovered: the rock has a slickenside which i can't really show on a photo. basically one of the sides is beat up into sand and polished. the whole rock unit was pretty beat up, so i'm not super suprised but it's cool

edit2: ok i tried to capture the slickenside

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yep. Quoting my geomorphologist family member here:

Nice but not gneiss.  Gneiss is in the mud rock continuum which has shale, slate, phylite and gneiss.  This is a banded lithic sandstone.  There is partial melting of the quartz forming some of the banding, but there is also original depositional gradation which is also responsible for the apparent banding.  The top has a component of limestone.

[–] Masterkraft0r@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

alright! sandstone then. it doesn't have limestone though. nothing on that rock reacts to acid

[–] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ah excellent! It's likely my family member is just tugging my leg to counter the tired but gneiss pun.

[–] Masterkraft0r@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

the more i think of it the more i doubt the sandstone again. i found this in a bigger region of high grade metamorphic rocks (mostly amphibolite, granulite). the specific place is a quarry where they quarry serpentinite as gravel. the rock unit is extremely busted up and crumbles basically on light touch into fist and smaller sized chunks. this rock, whatever it is, formed in cracks between the serpentinite. also for a straight forward sandstone this has a lot of mica in it and there are bands of nearly pure mica. i need to see if i can make take a picture with the microscope tomorrow.

[–] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well, I will be happy to relay the results to get the ubergeek response and report back. He loves his job.