Naturae Lapides is right. After 10 years, #QuartzDeservesToWin MinCup26

#MinCup26 ⚒️ sci-fi 🧪 🖖🏼 scifi Geosciences #WomenInSTEM geology #geosky #GIS 🍎 🪐 🔭 🌋 📚 🌿

The time for quartz has come.

Only quartz offers us such beauty as this chlorite quartz, where a plant world seems frozen for eternity.

#QuartzDeservesToWin

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Close your eyes... breathe in... when I snap my fingers, you’ll wake up and vote for Quartz!!

Quartz is versatile: here’s a photo of fossilised bark completely covered in shiny brown quartz

#QuartzDeservesToWin

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I like halite and cuprite as well, but let’s be serious at this point: only quartz offers such a wealth of shapes and colors—and so much enjoyment for amateur mineralogists like myself.

#QuartzDeservesToWin

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I’m delighted that Quartz won the cup, though I’m not so keen on the ballot box stuffing.

Congratulations and long may Quartz go, because… #QuartzDeservesToWin

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Another quick photo to celebrate!

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Cranberry Gneiss, Mesoproterozoic, 1.05 Ga; Appalachian Mt.s, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences

Gneiss is a metamorphic rock that high temp & pressure have caused the minerals in granite to separate into light & dark bands. The light bands are quartz.

#MinCup26 #QuartzDeservesToWin

The final stretch!

One last photo to encourage you to vote for the quartz – a classic specimen of quartz with rutile running right through it

#TeamQuartz #QuartzDeservesToWin

Vote Quartz !

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Final choices, and you know what’s right. Only quartz can bring so much joy to so many people in the world of mineralogy.

My best quartz specimens from these next two days, starting with a smoky quartz veined with tourmaline.

#QuartzDeservesToWin

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It’s the year of quartz, and here’s another photo to convince you: quartz can produce magnificent massive crystals, but also delicate lace-like formations as this beautiful cluster of micro-quartz coloured by chlorite.

#QuartzDeservesToWin

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