Story: Rock and mineral names

More links and websites

• Acid rocks of the Taupo-Rotorua volcanic district

  A paper from the Royal Society of New Zealand vol. 64 (1935) by Patrick Marshall, who introduced the names ignimbrite and tuhualite.

• Chemical and modal composition of dunite from Dun Mountain, Nelson

  This short paper by J. J. Reed, in the New Zealand Journal of Science (1959), describes dunite. (PDF, 565 KB)

• List of minerals named from New Zealand

  The Geoscience Society of New Zealand web site gives references to technical information on the 13 minerals first described from New Zealand.

• New Zealand ruby rock (goodletite)

  The Ruby Rock shop in Hokitika specialises in jewellery made from goodletite.

• Phosphate minerals formed by reaction of bird guano with basalt at Cooks Head Rock and Green Island, Otago, New Zealand.

  This PDF (96 KB) of a short paper by C. A. Landis and D. Craw, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand (2003), describes the mineral taranakite in Otago.

• Soda-metasomatised argillites associated with the Nelson ultramafic belt

  This short paper by J. J. Reed, from the New Zealand Journal of Science (1959), describes the argillite rock, now known as adzite, that was quarried for adzes from D’Urville Island and east Nelson. (PDF, 1.7 MB).

More suggestions and sources

• Grapes, Rodney, and Ken Palmer. ‘(Ruby-sapphire)-chromium mica-tourmaline [goodletite] rocks from Westland, New Zealand.’ Journal of Petrology 37, no. 2 (1996): 293–315.
• Railton, G., and W. A. Watters. Minerals of New Zealand. Bulletin 104. Wellington: New Zealand Geological Survey, 1990.
• Reed, J. J. ‘Mineralogy and petrology in the New Zealand Geological Survey 1865–1965.’ New Zealand Journal of Geology & Geophysics 8, no. 6 (December 1965): 999–1,087.