I was labeling my whole rock collection wrong for a solid year.

I was at a club meeting in Boise and showed off a piece of 'granite' I found near the river. This older guy, Frank, just squinted and said, 'Kid, that's not granite, that's a piece of quartz monzonite. Look at the pink feldspar.' I went home and checked my other labels with a hand lens. Turns out I'd been calling anything with big crystals 'granite' for months. How many of you have had a basic ID totally flipped on you like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

murray.cole2mo ago

Had a buddy swear his "petrified wood" was a dinosaur bone until a park ranger told him it was just weirdly shaped sandstone.

brookefox2mo ago

Frank was probably just showing off, who cares if you call it granite?

saraho483d ago

So how do you tell the difference between a real fossil and just a cool rock that looks like something? Is there a way to know without dragging an expert into it?