Geo-pic of the week: Cleavage

The mineral in the above pictures is calcite, a common mineral in earth’s crust that is the main component of the sedimentary rock limestone.  The stack of samples (top) exhibit a physical characteristic known as cleavage.  The cleavage of calcite causes it to break into a rhombus-shape (see picture).

Cleavage is the tendency of a crystalline substance, such as a mineral, to break along parallel planes that reflect the internal arrangement of the atoms in the crystal.  All crystals, by definition, have a uniform atomic arrangement.  To illustrate this property, I’ve included a second picture (bottom), borrowed from Dr. Cathy Sutton, that shows an extremely magnified calcite crystal.  The repeating rhombus-shapes in the picture are individual calcite molecules.  Basically, cleavage is the outward expression of the internal structure of a mineral.

The samples on the left were collected from Midwest Lime Quarry, Batesville, Arkansas.

Geo-pic of the week: Trilobite Romance

The photo above shows trace fossils that record the travels of two trilobites.  Trilobites are an extinct group of marine invertebrate animals, resembling horse-shoe crabs, that flourished for 100s of millions of years in the Paleozoic Era (540-250 mya).   The tracks the animal left are known as the trace fossil, Cruziana.  It appears that one traveled from the right side of the photo, the other from the left, until they met in the middle where they rested for a while.  At the center of the photo are resting traces known as Rusophycus.  Perhaps they became friends or maybe they were even more than friends?  It is Valentine’s Day.  Their traces are preserved in the Atoka Formation of west-central Arkansas.