(Left) Eye of the Tiger - GEO 070

GEO 070

Tiger's Eye

Class: Mineral

Location: Africa

I'm trying something new here so if you haven't yet check out Part I of this Tiger's Eye post, a kind of before and after. In Part I we looked at a specimen of Tiger's Eye from Africa that was polished whereas here we're looking at the straight from the earth raw material. As it was briefly mentioned in the other post, this mineral is actually another form of quartz, however its still very different from most other specimens like the citrine posted earlier. This is because its formed by pseudomorphous replacement rather than by just growing crystals.

As you'll notice in just about all examples of Tiger's Eye there are a lot of stripes, not just the larger ones but if you look closely you will see lots of very thin strands up and down the piece. This is because the mineral starts off as Riebeckite, specifically Crocidolite which is a type of asbestos and is also blue. It forms naturally and has these very thin strands of mineral, hence being an asbestos. What happens is that the mineral silicon dioxide starts to replace the minerals in the crocidolite, basically turning the asbestos into quartz. Once the pseudomorphous replacement has been completed the mineral Tiger's Eye will be left.

Both specimens GEO 053 and GEO 070 are from Africa according to their labels but they are more than likely not from the same place. Generally Tiger's Eye is mined in South Africa but that doesn't mean that these two specimens were. I'm just putting it out there so people don't think that because I'm connecting these two specimens that they have some sort of link. They don't other than that they are the same species of mineral. One is polished the other is not.

Learn more about Tiger's Eye.

GO TO PART I.