Picked up a few rock fragments from beaches on our latest trip and was surprised to see so many silver coloured flakes embedded. Some really large rocks had sheets approximately 400mm x 200m, smooth texture similar to silver. Todays wruw has a small example, any ideas what causes this?
Firebombs shot from Planet X that didn't have the desired effect after descending through the atmosphere.
Mica, obviously knew of it but never seen it in the raw state Just proves that there is nothing you can't find out on this forum. NOW about this weeks numbers for our National Lottery
The dropping is too small for hippocampus - they're a whole lot bigger than you'd think from looking at the tiny caseback engravings. I'm thinking Shetland Unicorn.
I think he was selling it and then pulled it. it has such a nice dial. if you're into dials. Personally, I love it.
True, it sat for so long that I came to my senses and withdrew it. A nice one on the bay last week but managed some self restraint
"Geology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes really, pressure, and time. That, and a big damn poster" Ellis Boyd 'Red' Redding
I'm not well-versed in geology at all, but have always been attracted to different examples. Here's one that I bought in New Zealand. Jade was only formed in places that had major tectonic plate action (i.e. tremendous heat and pressure), and as NZ happens to lie right on Asia's main fault line, there is jade found in some parts of the country. Because of the pressure under which it was originally formed, Jade is incredibly hard. It cannot be carved, but rather must be ground and then polished.
Hippocampinae: Due to the morphologically intermediate nature of the pygmy pipehorses between pipefishes and seahorses, the taxonomic placement of this group remains contentious, and three different classifications have been proposed for the subfamily Hippocampinae. No well-resolved phylogeny exists, making it impossible to settle this issue at the present time. Hippocampinae comprises both seahorses and pygmy pipehorses[1] Phylogenetic analyses based on five nuclear genetic loci recovered the genera Hippocampus and Idiotropiscis as sister taxa, suggesting that seahorses and pygmy pipehorses are a monophyletic group[9] and hence share a common evolutionary origin. However, the same phylogeny indicates that if the subfamily Hippocampinae is accepted as valid, then the pipefish subfamily Syngnathinae is paraphyletic, because the former is not a sister group of the latter, but is nested within it.[9] Hippocampinae includes only seahorses, pygmy pipehorses are placed into the pipefish subfamily Syngnathinae[6] This classification system disregards both genetic data and the morphological characters shared by seahorses and pygmy pipehorses. As seahorses have a sister taxon relationship with Idiotropiscis, and other pygmy pipehorse genera are likely basal to this group (given their more pipefish-like appearance), this classification would also make the Syngnathinae paraphyletic. Hippocampinae includes only seahorses, pygmy pipehorses are placed into own subfamily[2] This classification places all pygmy pipehorses into the subfamily Acentronurinae. Based on the nuclear DNA phylogeny, the exclusion of the seahorses from this group likely makes it paraphyletic. However, such a placement is partially supported by an alternative molecular phylogeny that is based on a combination of nuclear and mitochondrial markers and that recovered a group comprising pygmy pipehorses and several pipefishes as a sister lineage of Hippocampus.[10] As the genus Hippocampus consists of two morphologically distinct forms, it has been suggested that it should be split into two distinct genera, Hippocampus and a new genus comprising the pygmy seahorses. Pygmy seahorses have a single gill opening on the back of the head (instead of two on the sides as in normal seahorses), and the males brood their young inside their trunk, instead of in a pouch on the tail.[11] A molecular phylogeny confirms that the pygmy seahorses are a monophyletic sister lineage of all other seahorses.[10]
