Chert Thin Section
The left to right field of view in the first left hand photo is 1 7 mm.
Chert thin section. This sample is from near kiel on the baltic coast. It is a tough rock that ancient people used to make tools and weapons. Fracture planes some lined in iron oxide are also common in some specimens.
Flint from the cretaceous chalks of northern europe. Chert is a sedimentary rock composed of microcrystallite quartz. Under crossed nichols a fine layering between chert the dominant material and chalcedony can be seen in some thin sections particularly those produced from variegated speciemns.
Tallahatta chert is colorless in thin section with minor mottling by limonite and other iron oxides hydroxides. To review the vocabulary the thin sections here show the rock chert composed of crystallites of presumably fibrous chalcedony a variety of quartz. It can be broken to form very sharp edges.
Iron rich red radiolarian chert. The amorphous organic rich ellipsoidal elongate and spherical bodies are actually fossilised faecal pellets termed coprolites. It is most likely that the bed this sample came from was deposited in an.
The image on the right is of a thin section taken from a block of windyfield chert. This texture is quite distinctive and diagnostic.