It’s National Collect Rocks Day, so FIU reached out to faculty members in the Department of Earth and Environment to learn about the rocks that set their careers in motion.
Adirondack
Rene Price would hike the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York on the weekends.
On one trip, she went in search of Herkimer Diamonds, which are actually quartz crystals. Unlike other quartz crystals, Herkimer Diamonds are special and rare with points on two ends instead of just one end. Though Price didn’t find the perfect crystal that day, she did discover the joy of caving. She has turned her fascination of caves into a career researching the interaction of water and rocks.
Blueschist
In the 1960s, the field of plate tectonics was in its infancy. Grenville Draperwas an undergraduate student
studying natural sciences at Cambridge University in England. First learning of blueschist rocks as a freshman, he became fascinated by the idea these striking, metamorphic rocks could point to where converging, tectonic plates once existed.
Looking to make an adventure out of a required undergraduate field research experience, Draper blindly stuck a pin in a map. Landing on Jamaica, he packed his bags and headed for the island’s remote Blue Mountains. Up until that point, metamorphic rocks had been reported there but not really studied. One rainy day, blue rocks peered up at Draper from the ground. Thinking these could be a potentially important find, he took a few of them back home for testing. Lab studies revealed they contained glaucophane, a mineral found only in rocks that form along convergent plate boundaries.
“I was beside myself with excitement! I had discovered Jamaica’s blueschists,” Draper said. “That was the beginning of my research career, and the rest of it has been concerned with the geology and tectonics of convergent plate boundaries.”
Since, then Draper’s body of work on earthquakes, volcanoes, plume rocks and sinkholes has helped reconstruct the geologic history of the Caribbean and has played a role in understanding how the planet is changing.
