Puddingstone Jasper
Nature's Best Rock and Gem

Puddingstone Jasper

Regular price $24.00 $0.00 Unit price per
The stone was named by English settlers in this area, about 1840, because it looked like their boiled suet pudding with cherries and currants (Christmas Pudding).


 
Custom-cut into a free-form shape. Approximate Size: 1.5 by 2 inches 
Puddingstone, or Pudding stone, is a conglomerate rock made up of a mixture of different, irregular sized grains and pebbles held together by a finer matrix, usually formed from quartz sand called quartzite . The pudding stone pebbles vary in color from red to brown and pink to purple. Pudding stones are considered metamorphic and sedimentary. The sedimentary rock is formed in river channels and may contain various minerals such as chromite, corundum, platinum, diamond, gold, sapphire, and zircon.

The history of this rock starts in the Huronian period of the Proterozoic era, approximately one billion years ago. During this period, extensive sediments were deposited in or adjacent to seas, lakes, and other bodies of water. Much of this material, derived by erosion from the older rocks, was in the form of fine sand particles and rounded pebbles of gray and white quartz. The bright red and brown jasper pebbles were deposited over small parts of an east-west band about 50 miles long lying north and northwest of what is now Bruce Mines, Ontario, Canada. Sand, free of the pebbles, formed sandstone under the weight of later sediments, the individual grains becoming cemented by silicone and iron- bearing waters. Mixed sand and pebbles became conglomerates or sandstone conglomerates by the same process. Under the heat and pressures of later volcanic activity, sandstones and conglomerates were transformed into quartzite and quartzide conglomerates. Weathering and erosion uncovered some of the rocks, and loose fragments in great masses were gathered and moved by the Labrador portion of the continental ice sheets. [geocaching.com]