Mineralogy Faqs

Popular Mineralogy Mineralogy and earth science for the amateur mineralogist and serious collector

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Night of the Saber-Tooth

by Andrew A. Sicree ______

The mammalian Tyrannosaurus rex found with saber-teeth that were broken off. The remaining stubs were then worn down by Favorite among fossils is the saber-toothed continued use, indicating that the animal cat. We’ve all seen him recreated in science survived the loss of one of its primary books: a tiger-sized cat with jutting sword- weapons. This implies that the animal didn’t like teeth and a mean disposition to match. absolutely need its saber-teeth to survive. He’s the mammalian Tyrannosaurs rex, the Perhaps the saber-toothed cats hunted terror of the ancient prairie, gobbling up the together as a pride of lions does today? The smaller herbivores, even taking out the pride would provide a better chance of occasional mammoth or mastodon. survival for an injured saber-tooth.

A variety of “saber-tooths” can be found in the fossil record. The most famous, the North Dirks vs. Scimitars

American species Smilodon, known to every True aficionados of saber-tooth animals school child as a “saber-toothed tiger,” was distinguish between the scimitar-toothed cats not really a tiger at all. Nor was every animal and the dirk-toothed cats. A scimitar is a with saber-teeth a true cat. curved sword and a dirk is a straight knife, Cats belong to the family Felidae in the thus the scimitar-toothed cats possess order Carnivora. Cat-like animals with saber- substantially curved teeth and the dirk-toothed tooths have been found and are classified cats have less-curved teeth. Smilodon was among the carnivore families of the dirk-toothed and possessed upper canines up Nimravidae (the “false saber-toothed cats”) to 11 inches in length.

and the Barbourofelidae (don’t you just love To use such long teeth, a saber-tooth cat these far-out scientific names?). Examples of had to open its mouth wide. Smilodon could saber-teeth can even be found among the open his jaws up to a 120° angle, freeing his marsupials. The leopard-sized predator saber-teeth like a pair of assassin’s daggers. Thylacosmilus was a saber-toothed marsupial Smilodon was a robust strong animal, not a (order Marsupialia – think of a giant opossum fast runner but capable of knocking over even with fangs and a mean temper) rather than a large prey. Once his prey was down, feline. Thylacosmilus lived in South America Smilodon’s saber-teeth would rip open its during the late Miocene and Pliocene throat or belly and soon it was dinnertime.

What is a saber-tooth?

The tar pits of California

A saber-tooth is not simply an over-long The best fossils of Smilodon have been tooth. If it were, we’d have to call the walrus recovered from the famous tar pits at Rancho a “saber-toothed seal.” The true saber-tooth La Brea in Los Angeles, California. Many is flattened rather than round, and the width of paleontology texts include the typical scene the tooth from front to back is usually more from Rancho La Brea’s Pleistocene past: an than twice the thickness from side to side. herbivore helplessly stuck in the tar attracts This thinned cross-section leaves the tooth carnivores such as dire wolves and saber- susceptible to damage: fossils have been toothed cats. The carnivores leap into the tar

A Different Type of Tiger pit to attack their prey only to become entrapped themselves. More than one Shimmering tiger’s-eye is a popular semi- Smilodon met its end mired in the tar pits and precious gemstone. Almost all mineral collectors the tar did a wonderful job of preserving their are familiar with the fibrous, golden-brown skeletons. material. Most systematic collectors typically have a piece or two with the label “quartz, variety A side note for those wondering how a tar tiger’s-eye” in their collections. Museum displays pit forms: the tar comes from petroleum. label it with the chemical formula of silica, SiO2. Petroleum (or oil) sometimes seeps out of the ground, forming pools. Over time oxidation In antiquity, lapidaries prized this stone. Although discovery of abundant sources of and biodegradation occurs (a fancy way of tiger’s-eye in South Africa in the 1870’s sent saying that bacteria attack the oil) and the prices for good material plummeting, it is still lighter, more volatile fraction of the oil highly popular with stone-cutters and kids. evaporates away. These processes convert the Until recently, tiger’s-eye was labeled as a liquid oil into the heavy asphaltum of the tar pseudomorph after asbestos. After all, with its pits. It is a natural version of the asphalt we fibrous appearance, it does look like asbestos. In use for road-building. the standard explanation crocidolite (a variety of the mineral riebeckite which occurs as asbestos, The last of the saber-tooths and is found as veins in rocks) was replaced by Although saber-toothed animals are all silica on an atom-for-atom basis so that the original fibrous habit was preserved. now extinct, their reign of terror lasted from the early Eocene (54.8 to 33.7 million years But Peter Heaney and Donald Fisher, ago), through the Oligocene (33.7-23.8 mil geoscientists at Pennsylvania State University in yrs), Miocene (23.8-5.3 mil yrs), Pliocene State College, PA, re-examined the tiger’s-eye (5.3-1.8 mil yrs), and into the Pleistocene story. Using the optical microscope and the (starting 1.8 million years ago). The first transmission electron microscope, they discovered saber-tooth mammal made its appearance in that tiger’s-eye is made up of quartz encasing minute crocidolite fibers. In other words, the North America in the early Middle Miocene. crocidolite is still present. This cat-sized creature is called Machaeroides. The last of the saber-tooths, Observations by Heaney and Fisher indicate Smilodon and Homotherium, went extinct that, as cracks in the host rocks opened and widened due to tectonic stresses on the rocks, both only about 10,000 years ago. It is quite quartz and crocidolite were deposited in the veins. possible that the earliest settlers of North Crocidolite and quartz nucleated (i.e., the crystals America met and fought Smilodon. Definitely started to grow) on opposite sides of the fractures they competed with Smilodon for prey. Either and grew toward each other, sealing the fractures way, humans survived and the last of the and creating the intergrown quartz/crocidolite saber-tooths passed into extinction. mixture we call tiger’s-eye.

Ref: Lars W. van den Hoek Ostende, The brown color of tiger’s-eye appears to be Michael Morlo, and Doris Nagel “Fossils due to the later addition of small crystals of iron Explained 52, Majestic killers: the sabre- oxide minerals (goethite, hematite, etc.?). The toothed cats” Geology Today, v. 22, no. 4 zig-zag growth patterns seen in tiger’s-eye are due July/August 2006, p. 150-157. to the reopening of the cracks as the host rocks shifted under tectonic stresses. Shifts in the host © Andrew A. Sicree, 2007 rock’s orientation lead to a change in the growth ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ direction of the tiger’s-eye mixture, thus the kinks ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ or bends seen in most specimens.

©2007, Andrew A. Sicree, Ph.D., [email protected] ~ 9-07-2 ~ Please do not reproduce or extract without permission society as an honorary member at age eleven Atomic Bombs and the and one year later he made his scientific debut Mineral Collector delivering a paper on minerals at a club meeting to the amazement of the members.

The scientist heading up the top-secret Uranium from Joachimsthal World War II “Manhattan Project” that built the atomic bomb got an early start in science Before heading to Harvard to study collecting minerals. J. Robert Oppenheimer chemistry, seventeen year-old Oppenheimer (1904-1967) progressed from minerals to spent a summer in Europe and collected chemistry and physics. Described by some as minerals in the famous Joachimsthal (“St. the “American Prometheus,” Oppenheimer Joachim’s Dale”) region in Bohemia (now in became a world-renowned theoretical the Czech Republic). Interestingly, given physicist and was tapped to lead the atomic Oppenheimer’s later leadership of the atomic bomb project. bomb project, Joachimsthal is the location

from which uranium was first discovered.

Started collecting minerals In 1789, Martin Heinrich Klaproth, a Born in New York City in 1904, German apothecary, took pitchblende from Oppenheimer began collecting minerals at the Joachimsthal and extracted a dense grayish age of five when his grandfather, in Germany, metal. He named the new element “uranium” presented him with a “starter” mineral in honor of astronomer William Herschel’s collection, complete with labels in German. discovery of the planet Uranus. Pitchblende Oppenheimer credits the collection with is a massive (meaning that it occurs as inspiring his interest in science. Toward the agglomerations of mineral grains – not as end of his life he remembered taking up discrete crystals with well-formed faces) mineralogy with a “collector’s interest” at variety of the mineral uraninite (UO2). In first. He then developed a “fascination with 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie isolated the crystals, their structure, birefringence, what elements radium and polonium from you saw in polarized light” and his growing pitchblende as well. passion for minerals blossomed into what he Where is his collection today? described as a “scientist’s interest.”

Mineral collectors helped Oppenheimer Later in life, Oppenheimer gave portions along the way. The curator of minerals at of his mineral collection to Linus Pauling, New York’s American Museum of Natural who went on to win the Nobel Prize twice History tutored the brilliant young boy in (Chemistry in 1954; Peace in 1962). mineralogy. Oppenheimer built a respectable Although he himself never won a Nobel collection and studied minerals and crystals, Prize, Oppenheimer made significant trying to understand their underlying discoveries in atomic physics that – along structures. with his leadership of the Manhattan Project – th rank him among the 20 Century’s most

With Kunz and the New York Club important scientists. Some of Oppenheimer’s minerals are preserved with the special In 1920, Dr. George F. Kunz (for whom collections of Linus Pauling’s papers at “kunzite” is named) was president of the New Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. York Mineralogical Club and the teen-age Robert Oppenheimer was proposed for Ref: Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Touchstone, New York, 1986). Pg. 118-119. membership. He had joined the famous © Andrew A. Sicree, 2007

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17 18 19 ACROSS 1 put it on my ___ 20 21 22 4 tombstone rock 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 9 the crystal ___ in plain view 31 32 33 34 35 12 uraninite is an ______14 Rhenium 36 37 38 15 electrical engineer (ab.) 39 40 41 42 16 winter mineral 43 44 45 46 17 river in the Congo 18 mineral from Deccan Traps 47 48 49 50 51 20 rural delivery 52 53 54 55 21 way. 56 57 58 59 22 gives yellow light in lamps 23 what Santa says 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 24 opposite of HI 67 68 69 70 26 mica mineral, often iron-rich 71 72 73 31 an incalculable time 33 unavoidable 35 where oil is found DOWN 43 solid with ordered atoms 36 some sold by the ____ 1 gem mineral 45 a crude person 37 Be aluminum silicate 2 fired 46 year 38 opposite of her 3 billion (ab.) 48 mining state 39 indium 4 General Electric 49 element for good bones 40 made the Universe 5 part of curve 51 employing 41 Orphan Annie’s dog says 6 noble gas 53 Nat’l Health Insurance 42 electrical engineer again 7 holds up golf ball 57 state 43 head of mining company 8 makes the Euro 59 ___ & Sciences 44 two or more eras 9 found in lepidolite 60 natural (ab.) 46 used in interest calc. 10 better than a king 61 Lincoln 47 money used in France 11 si 62 what horse eats 50 magazine 13 Cornwall and _____ 63 untrue 70 of age 51 a college (ab.) 18 what he did to gold mine 64 __thermal ore 52 how dark a mine is 19 where mineral is tested 66 auto club

54 fluorescent (ab.) 23 radioactive LAST MONTH’S SOLUTION 55 south 25 important to boat CS A B I S M I T E BED 56 Solar element 27 south of Wisconsin AL U M S A A EM RAY 58 near the surface 28 Thank God etc. SA G E P Y R O L U S I T E SN T V A SR T 59 poisonous metal 29 another poisonous metal I E A T E BORATES 60 orthorhombic zeolite 30 when acid meets calcite TO O L I R A S FLAT 65 narcotics agent 32 alt. spelling for aeon ED S G N A T S MA E I RD T E A A GAR BB 67 basketball group 34 part of the tree I E E L A M B E R FBI 68 fake smart 69 press gang 37 what Caspar says TE X T T SAO TALC 70 banded silicate 38 hours (ab.) E X T R E M E GD UR O 71 phone 40 geography (ab.) I P D EBB ON M A N G A N I T E S ALB I 72 glassy impact rock 41 what every crystal has AB C G O AT ASSET 73 a donkey 42 near, upon ES T A N A T A S E TYE