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Barnebys HQ
Brahegatan 10
BOX 5038
114 37 Stockholm
All auctions / Ethnographical / 77g Rainforest Jasper Skull – 120 million years of...
Around 120 million years ago, in the age of the dinosaurs, the now long-extinct Mount Hay volcano in Queensland, Australia erupted. The rhyolite lava oozed out thick and dense, sank through the lighter melt layers beneath it, and cooled so slowly that not a single crystal type could form at rest, but several at once and in a jumble: quartz and feldspar grew into spherical spheroids, while trapped gas bubbles filled with agate and chalcedony. Nature here truly reached for everything available in that single moment, and let it grow at the same time, unordered and without regard for one another. That it happened to yield a rainforest-like image is merely a coincidence of color: green, brown, red, yellow, and cream lay so close together that people who held the material for the first time millions of years later would inevitably think of a leafy canopy — though the stone has nothing to do with an actual rainforest except for this optical association. It was only in 1963 that Bert and Gwen Hayes began commercial mining at Mount Hay; it was officially introduced to the market in 1986. Exactly this unordered simultaneity is also reflected in this skull’s texture: partly sandily matte, partly polished to a high gloss, as if each zone had decided for itself how it wanted to face time. Material: Rainforest Jasper – spheroidal rhyolite (not true jasper) Origin: Mount Hay, Queensland, Australia Dimensions: 4.9 x 3.6 x 3.3 cm Weight: 77 g Special features: Contrasting surface texture between sandy-matte and highly polished zones; pronounced spheroidal patterning in green, brown, and yellow tones
Estimate:£0.85
To the auctionView all items fromCatawikiorEthnographical
Estimate:
£0.85
A monumental Middle Jurassic period (174.1 to 163.5 million ...
08/10/2026
£7,000
Est: £10,000
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