Post by Fossilman on Dec 22, 2011 12:10:37 GMT -5
The story on this agate always excites me...... ;D
Montana Agate Information:
Montana Moss Agate is one of the alluvial agates. Found not in-site, but in the Flaxville gravel deposits scattered over a large area encompassing hundreds of square miles. The beauty of this is that they cannot be claimed, mined and dug-out by a few enterprises but will be available, in smaller numbers, to public and collectors for tens and hundreds of years to come. The fresh exposures do get hunted quite diligently each year, but new agates are always found by the persistent collectors.
Montana Moss Agate, a name given to the beautiful chalcedony found, most abundantly, in the alluvial gravels of the Yellowstone River, would probably be better named Yellowstone Agate, because it's genesis was centered in the Yellowstone Park area. The actual tremendous volcanic activity that produced the conditions necessary for the formation of agate, spanned hundreds of miles and millions of years.
Although it's genesis centered in the Yellowstone park area of Montana and Wyoming, this volcanic activity ranged from the eastern Rocky Mountain front in south-central Wyoming to the western front of the Black Hills and north across eastern Montana and into Saskatchewan and Manitoba Canada.
Eastern Montana was mostly a shallow inland ocean, almost a swamp with huge forests lining it's shores and islands of volcanoes spewing forth lava to entomb parts of the forest in lava and ash. The bowels of the Yellowstone bulged and roared and flowed mountains of lava that decimated thousands of acres of mighty redwoods and sequoias for hundreds of miles around. This decimation continued for hundreds of years with layer upon layer of forests growing up and then being driven down under the ponderous weight of all the mega-tons of lava and ash. The hot lava devoured most of the wood in it's rush to cover the trees, but some of the shape and ingredients of the limbs remained trapped in the cooling lava. When the time of volcanoes and lava was subdued and the rains came, mineral laden silica-water flowed into the cavities and pockets left by the dying trees and bubbling lava. As flow after flow slowly filled the pockets with liquefied silica, Montana Agate was born.
Montana Agate Information:
Montana Moss Agate is one of the alluvial agates. Found not in-site, but in the Flaxville gravel deposits scattered over a large area encompassing hundreds of square miles. The beauty of this is that they cannot be claimed, mined and dug-out by a few enterprises but will be available, in smaller numbers, to public and collectors for tens and hundreds of years to come. The fresh exposures do get hunted quite diligently each year, but new agates are always found by the persistent collectors.
Montana Moss Agate, a name given to the beautiful chalcedony found, most abundantly, in the alluvial gravels of the Yellowstone River, would probably be better named Yellowstone Agate, because it's genesis was centered in the Yellowstone Park area. The actual tremendous volcanic activity that produced the conditions necessary for the formation of agate, spanned hundreds of miles and millions of years.
Although it's genesis centered in the Yellowstone park area of Montana and Wyoming, this volcanic activity ranged from the eastern Rocky Mountain front in south-central Wyoming to the western front of the Black Hills and north across eastern Montana and into Saskatchewan and Manitoba Canada.
Eastern Montana was mostly a shallow inland ocean, almost a swamp with huge forests lining it's shores and islands of volcanoes spewing forth lava to entomb parts of the forest in lava and ash. The bowels of the Yellowstone bulged and roared and flowed mountains of lava that decimated thousands of acres of mighty redwoods and sequoias for hundreds of miles around. This decimation continued for hundreds of years with layer upon layer of forests growing up and then being driven down under the ponderous weight of all the mega-tons of lava and ash. The hot lava devoured most of the wood in it's rush to cover the trees, but some of the shape and ingredients of the limbs remained trapped in the cooling lava. When the time of volcanoes and lava was subdued and the rains came, mineral laden silica-water flowed into the cavities and pockets left by the dying trees and bubbling lava. As flow after flow slowly filled the pockets with liquefied silica, Montana Agate was born.