There are probably thousands of heart-shaped gems manufactured for gifts on Valentine’s Day, but this amethyst geode didn’t need any carving or polishing. When miners broke it open they found an extraordinary heart already prepared by Mother Earth.
Miners in Uruguay just dug up a massive crystal in a new mine that held a secret inside.
Workers discovered the amazing quartz geode at the border of Uruguay and Brazil when they split open a rock to discover a beautiful purple heart on each side of it.
Uruguay Minerals had just begun excavation at the Santa Rosa mine in the Catalan area in Artigas, and weren’t sure if anything of value would be uncovered.
The land with its rugged terrain of basalt provided difficult conditions under which to work—but their struggle was rewarded with ‘a pearl of great price’.
“What a treasure!” exclaimed Marcos Lorenzelli of Uruguay Minerals, who said it was the first time the company had ever found such a once-in-a-lifetime gemstone.
Lorenzelli told GNN they have already received a bid of $120,000 for the matching pair of rocks. Due to the basalt, Lorenzelli estimates the weight to be over 150 pounds (80kg).
Amethyst is a purple variety of quartz and owes its violet color to irradiation, impurities of iron and in some cases other transition metals, and the presence of other trace elements, which result in complex crystal lattice substitutions
An amethyst geode is a hollow rock with amethyst crystals lining the inner walls, so first the cavity must be formed. This can happen anywhere there is or was lava close to the earth’s surface.
The cavities then fill up with a silica-rich liquid that contains trace amounts of iron. Over time, this liquid forms crystals — six-sided pyramids (rhombohedrons) of amethyst. Crystals with a color that range from light lilac to deep purple are formed when there is a trace of iron in the liquid, resulting in amethyst geodes.
