the bedrock
basalt
lava · gas holes filled with agate, copper


The tell
Heavy for its size, evenly dark gray-black all the way through, and no layering at all. Shale splits into sheets; slag has bubbles and usually a color in it when you hold it to the light.
Amygdaloidal basalt, the kind with gas pockets filled by later minerals, is the parent rock of half the Keweenaw list. Datolite, thomsonite, greenstone and agate all grew in holes in basalt.
If the holes are smooth, round and roughly hemispherical, you are probably holding an omar instead. Basalt cavities are irregular and often filled in with a mineral. An omar is a fine-grained sedimentary erratic the ice carried more than seven hundred miles from Hudson Bay, and the pits are where concretions weathered out of it. It is not on this chart. It is still a good find.
What it gets mistaken for
- omar
- magnetite
- black shale
- leland blue
- frankfort green
- slag
- dark limestone
The facts
- also calledlava · its gas holes filled with copper and agate
- age~2.7 to 1.1 billion yrs
- where it turns upevery shore · glacial float
- the field markno crystals you can pick out by eye · knife slides off · smooth round pits mean an omar
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