I participated this year in the Secret Santa Rock Exchange, wherein I shipped out a mystery rock to a random person, and got back a mystery rock from another random person. What fun!

My mystery rock has folds in it!

It’s from Matt Bruseke at Kansas State University. Check it out:

Matt writes that this is

a piece of the Silver City rhyolite, from the Owyhee Mountains, Idaho. The sample comes from a rhyolite lava and is ~16.0-16.3 Ma… I collected this piece while we were sampling the lava for geochemistry/petrography because of the 3D nature of the flow folding that is present in the rock… I couldn’t resist!

So cool! I can’t resist it either!

Some more photos of other faces of the sample:

Matt actually sent me two rocks: the second was a Kansan kimberlite, as a bonus. (That’s the advantage of USPS flat rate shipping – you can cram as many rocks in the box as you can fit!) The Secret Santa Rock Exchange is the coolest thing I’ve done in a while – I recommend it to all for the 2020 holiday season!

Happy Friday, Happy #AGU19, and Happy Holidays!