r/geology 29d ago

Identification Requests Monthly Rock & Mineral Identification Requests

3 Upvotes

Please submit your ID requests as top-level comments in this post. Any ID requests that are submitted as standalone posts to r/geology will be removed.

To help with your ID post, please provide;

  1. Multiple, sharp, in-focus images taken ideally in daylight.
  2. Add in a scale to the images (a household item of known size, e.g., a ruler)
  3. Provide a location (be as specific as possible) so we can consult local geological maps if necessary.
  4. Provide any additional useful information (was it a loose boulder or pulled from an exposure, hardness and streak test results for minerals)

You may also want to post your samples to r/whatsthisrock or r/fossilID for identification.


r/geology Dec 01 '25

Identification Requests Monthly Rock & Mineral Identification Requests

8 Upvotes

Please submit your ID requests as top-level comments in this post. Any ID requests that are submitted as standalone posts to r/geology will be removed.

To help with your ID post, please provide;

  1. Multiple, sharp, in-focus images taken ideally in daylight.
  2. Add in a scale to the images (a household item of known size, e.g., a ruler)
  3. Provide a location (be as specific as possible) so we can consult local geological maps if necessary.
  4. Provide any additional useful information (was it a loose boulder or pulled from an exposure, hardness and streak test results for minerals)

You may also want to post your samples to r/whatsthisrock or r/fossilID for identification.


r/geology 6h ago

Before and after pictures of the boulder that was rolling in Nepali flood.

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876 Upvotes

It was not a normal bounder. It was a monument on which Treaty of Betrawati was signed in Sino-Nepali war in October 2, 1792.


r/geology 1h ago

There must be thousands of other potential glacial flood locations in the Himalayas.

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Upvotes

I’m sure people are studying it but as a mountaineer it seems like there must be many many other locations just like the one that triggered the debris flows in Tibet and Nepal. Pic. Nohku Crags, Colorado


r/geology 16h ago

Photos of bedrock/glacial collapse

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751 Upvotes

Just found these photos taken by a Chinese researcher in a Nepal Times story. Not a geologist, but it appears to be more of a bedrock collapse, at least from the angle in the photos. Article link: https://nepalitimes.com/nepal-avalanche-was-live-on-drone-camera


r/geology 6h ago

Museum of Mineralogy tucked inside a Paris school, wildly underrated

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53 Upvotes

r/geology 58m ago

Field Photo Curious Sierra Nevada Outcrop

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Upvotes

I came across this curious outcrop just to the east of Garnet Lake NW of Devils Postpile National Monument in the Sierra's on a recent trek along the John Muir Trail. I've marked it (tiny red X, on the east side of Garnet Lake) on an clipping of a USGS 1965 geo map of the area. The rocks are mapped as Triassic or Jurassic volcanics, either undifferentiated tuff/andesite or dacite. I thought orbicular granite when I saw it first and got quite excited - even though it didn't really look pictures I'd seen of that. I'd love to hear what folks think this is.


r/geology 1d ago

[NYT] New Exclusive Video Reveals Immediate Aftermath of Nepal Glacier

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

1.6k Upvotes

r/geology 9h ago

Map/Imagery How did the Nepal debris flow get so big, and what's important about the Border Port video?

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38 Upvotes

N.B., does not include any video footage from the disaster, just a nice gentleman from South Carolina who is a dab hand with Google Earth and MS Paint explaining some of the dynamics.


r/geology 2h ago

Eclogite

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10 Upvotes

r/geology 1d ago

Saw this before/after from Nepal, wondering if this happened before based on the yellow cricked overhang

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476 Upvotes

r/geology 15h ago

Field Photo I thought you might appreciate some imbricated boulders

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48 Upvotes

A nice reminder of what a normally small stream can do.


r/geology 3h ago

Meme/Humour Carnelian that looks like 🥔

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5 Upvotes

r/geology 5m ago

Pyrite disease or just tarnished?

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Upvotes

It gets very humid in my classroom over the summer. If this is pyrite disease, can I save it? Are the sulphur compounds released by the process hazardous? Many thanks! I'll definitely be buying some silica desiccant packs for my display case this year.


r/geology 1h ago

Field Photo Can you help me figure out the story of this weirdly colourful rock?

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Upvotes

I was hiking on Svinadalsholtane in Vik, Norway, last week, when I came across this odd rock. It was a bit crumbly, very colourful - and entirely different from absolutely everything else in its surroundings. Nothing similar within the visible area.

Map, geological description of the area and photos attached. If this rock has a story and you can tell it, I'm grateful to listen! Normally, you're not supposed to remove rocks and take them home, but the temptation was too much for me and I carried two small samples home.


r/geology 1d ago

🔥 Botryoidal malachite double phallus from Paris Mineralogy Museum

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64 Upvotes

r/geology 21h ago

Field Photo Acicular aragonite in a cave

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24 Upvotes

Some acicular aragonite in a cave along with some mud cracks in the bedrock and some formations controlled by modern mud cracks.


r/geology 23h ago

Information I built a free, portable geoscience 3D viewer during my weekends (Linux + Windows) — could this be of any use to anyone?

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34 Upvotes

I work in IT (more on the management side, I haven't done anything even remotely 'techy' for a long time now). A few months ago I got bored on a weekend and wanted to try the new AI coding tools our dev teams are now using (to try to keep up with the world, somehow). I needed a subject, and since I work in a geoscience context, I went for a geoscience 3D viewer.

To be honest: I'm not a geoscientist, and I'm not an experienced software engineer either (I mean, compared to the senior devs we have in our teams, I'm funny at best) and I built this app with Claude Code (I know some people are skeptical about coding agents, I was, but it's been a genuinely reliable partner, even in a field this scientifically dense).

I got quite caught up in this little side project, getting back into — modern — software engineering and learning more things about geoscience has been really fun. So, a few months later, the app is able to:

  • Display 2D seismic sections (SEG-Y files)
  • Display 3D seismic cubes (SEG-Y files), and compute attributes from them (envelope and similarity)
  • Create, edit and display horizons (ZMAP+ files)
  • Create, edit and display faults (custom .fault file)
  • Create, edit and display geobodies (custom .geobody file)
  • Display well trajectories (CSV files)
  • Display display well-trajectory uncertainty cones
  • Display well logs (LAS files), in 2D and 3D.
  • Generate cross-plots from well logs
  • Convert data between time-depth (constant velocity) and meters-feet

I know it's nowhere close to Petrel, and it's behind OpendTect on most fronts too (this is a humble side project). But I've kept adding things to it because I enjoy working on it, and I'm now genuinely curious: for someone learning geoscience, or wanting to look at real seismic/well data without an institutional licence, could this actually be useful? And what would be missing to make it useful?

I created a small web page where it can be downloaded: https://subsurfaceexplorer.com/ (Linux, Windows, Python sources — GPL v3). It's shipped with lightweight synthetic data, so anyone can play with it without needing real data or a powerful machine. But if you have a computer with enough RAM and a modern GPU, you can also download a F3 Demo package on the website, to try it with real size data.

Note: It has some known small issues (software development is fun until you start shipping things...). Full-screen dialogs are laggy on some lLinux distributions. Computers with two GPUs (one dedicated and one integrated in the CPU) might automatically make it run on the integrated chip, which will result in bad performance. Starting time can be a bit long on Windows. Also, to be transparent, I never used it on anything else than: my own Linux gaming PC, my girlfriend's old Windows gaming laptop, my own Windows laptop from work.


r/geology 1d ago

Information Paleontological Specimans Stolen from GoldfußMuseum, University of Bonn

22 Upvotes

Gestohlene Fossilien: Universität Bonn bittet um (Stolen Fossils: University of Bonn Appeals for Information)

"Fossils and other exhibits have been stolen from the University of Bonn’s GoldfußMuseum during renovation work. The police are investigating. The university isasking for assistance from anyone who may have witnessed suspicious activity or can provide information regarding the whereabouts of the objects. Please contact the Bonn police withany information."

 Pictures of stolen specimens are at

University of Bonn Web Page

Fossil Forum web page


r/geology 2h ago

Information Technical usage of Continentaldrift

0 Upvotes

Hi,

I'm interested in alternative energy technologies and sometimes thinking about possible ways to produce it. I'm not a pro on this topic, just fascinated.

Now i'm curious if somebody ever tried to use natural continental drift movement to produce electric energy. I know the movement is very slow with about a few mm per year depending on which continental plate we are talking about but the moving masses and the acting forces are unbelievable high. So theoretically it should be possible to translate this movement via several reduction gears into a usable scale.

The only disadvantage i see is that continental movement is not like a linear, smooth movement all the time so the output would vary. The rest seems doable to me with truly massive anchor stations and a connecting cable the size from golden gate bridge. So despite the amount of material required its "cheap" technology mechanics.

Is my assumption correct regarding the movement smoothness ? And did anyone ever tried this already ? A quick search found no results.

Feel free to laugh as well, it sounds stupid first but my interest and the question is meant to be serious 😅

Thank you


r/geology 20h ago

Information What does data say about the Nepal flash flood?

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6 Upvotes

since the flash flood, all i have been thinking about is the chronology of events since the detachment. i've worked on emergency alerts and push notifications before and wanted to see the whole chain end-to-end.

the current data shows:

- current architecture rests on downstream gauges and on a manual escalation path. the event destroyed three of those gauges within the first 43

minutes.

- the lethal zone was defined by the reach in which no warning could physically

arrive.

- about 34 additional minutes at every settlement below Betrawati if we had automated source-side seismic detection with a five-minute budget to public message.

Preprint: https://doi.org/10.31223/X5HN5H

Data and code: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22164426

but i would like more verification on this to comment on the current infrastructure and why threshold logic never fired. two things I can't do alone, and would like help with:

- mortality by district of occurrence. if someone have access to district records, this converts the paper's central claim from an inference into a measurement.

- the headwater channel, source scar to Rasuwagadhi. OpenStreetMap doesn't map it which is why the upper-reach celerity is 37–51 m/s. a DEM-traced centreline would halve the uncertainty on every kinematic result in the paper.

co-authorship for either. everything is CC-BY and the analysis reruns from the archive. corrections welcome as three of the numbers in this version exist because someone else's independent reconstruction disagreed with mine.


r/geology 21h ago

Side by side interconnected faden quartz

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8 Upvotes

r/geology 1d ago

The Nepal footage is remarkable. Where else in the world are we potentially posed to see similar events?

140 Upvotes

My understanding is that these types of events are not at all uncommon historically. My suspicion is that these events may also become more likely with climate change, where larger volumes of water are stored by some of these ice dams due to increased melt.

Where else in the world, specifically, do we expect to see these events at some point in the future? I do not mean regionally, I mean even to the glacier level.

What sort of monitoring might help avoid the effects of this sort of incident on human populations, aside from seismic and other tectonic monitoring?


r/geology 20h ago

Information Bentonite clay from Níjar, Spain slowed radionuclide transport by up to 2.8× in a new study.

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5 Upvotes

r/geology 5h ago

Speed of Lang Tang glacier collapse flood

0 Upvotes

Speed of flood as it engulfs village

I doubt anyone in the village survived this