Stromatolite?

[JeanB]

What was he/she cured of Jean?.... This perhaps?

Rock Pox.jpg

Unfortunately I lost the reference but found this to answer your very pertinent question:

Green Jasper Physical Healing Energy

«Green Jasper is considered highly useful for treating disorders of the stomach and digestive system, the chest and lungs, as well as the kidneys, spleen, bladder, and liver. It helps reduce toxicity and inflammation, dispels bloating and balances fluid retention, and may aid in controlling body odor. Green Jasper also assists in the prevention and treatment of bronchitis, colds, coughs, and influenza. [Hall, 156][101 Hall, 112][Eason, 274][Gienger, 51]

Jasper water is soothing for the digestive system, and is particularly useful as a gem elixir because it does not over stimulate the body. It may be made by the indirect method, or by letting the stone soak in demineralized water overnight. [Hall, 155][Megemont, 102]

Green Jasper is beneficial in staunching blood flow, particularly nosebleeds and menstrual flow, and assists in reducing hemorrhoids. It soothes epilepsy and gout, and may be used to treat the sensory loss of smell. [Megemont, 102][Fernie, 174][Lecouteux, 160][Melody, 345]»

I will let you guess which discomfort that guy was cured of, but it was not related to bloodflow nor nervous system disorder. It narrows down the choices...

I can tell you I was quite amazed...

Jean

Edited April 8, 2014 by JeanB

[Donald Kasper]

On 4/4/2014 at 10:56 AM, JeanB said:

Here's the email transcript of Pr. Riding concerning Kambaba Jasper:

________________________________________________________________

Jean,

Many thanks for your interesting enquiry. I had never heard of Kambaba Jasper before, and I found it a bit hard to dig through all the gemstone descriptions to try to find out what it might be. I'm still not sure but maybe it is the same as ocean jasper, also described as orbicular jasper, which according to the information below occurs in silica-rich volcanic ash.

On this USGS site:
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/LivingWith/VolcanicPast/Places/volcanic_past_nebraska.html
I found this:
Nebraska's Orbicular Jasper:8
Orbicular jasper forms when a silica rich rhyolitic ash flow cools quickly. Quartz and feldspar crystallize in spherulites, radial aggregates of needle like crystals, that provide the interesting structure seen in this kind of jasper. Better known examples of orbicular jasper are often seen offered as Poppy Jasper or Morgan Hill Jasper from California or Ocean Jasper from Madagascar. The Nebraska stone has a similar structure to these latter varieties.

Wikipedia also has an entry on 'Orbicular jasper'.

And here:
http://www.mindat.org/min-27171.html

Many mineral/rock deposits can have banded/layered structure and it can be difficult to compare their origins, but if Kambaba Jasper crystallizes from hot volcanic fluids then it is not microbial and not a stromatolite.

About biofilms, it seems very reasonable to imagine that quorum sensing is pretty well as old as bacteria, which I would place at least as old as 3500 million years. But apart from comparing biofilms of that age with present-day ones, I cannot think of a way of testing this interpretation.

Thanks again for your interesting enquiry.
All good wishes for your work,
Robert


Robert Riding PhD DSc
Research Professor

Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences
University of Tennessee
1412 Circle Drive
Knoxville, TN 37996-1410
USA

____________________________________________________________________

I will add to this the information that (some) Kambaba Jasper comes from Mahajanga Province (Majunga), Madagascar, which is NorthWest and not SouthEast. So I am more and more suspicious that this Jasper has real biogenic origin, although Robert does not rule out the possibility.

Comments?

Jean

Spectral reflectance infrared spectroscopy shows that kambaba jasper/kabamba jasper is orbicular albite in a matrix of quartz and microcline.  The green is from microcline.  There is an unidentified amphibole in the water spectral region, perhaps like a tremolite or something close.  Orbicular structures from albite are common exsolution structures as volcanic melts cool and the feldspars and silica separate.  The poppy jaspers from Morgan Hill to Madagascar are quartz radiolarite fossil jaspers.  Metamorphic alteration from subduction zones where these are found can produce secondary minerals such as actinolite, chlorite, and lizardite serpentine to form.

[Donald Kasper]

21 hours ago, Donald Kasper said:

Spectral reflectance infrared spectroscopy shows that kambaba jasper/kabamba jasper is orbicular albite in a matrix of quartz and microcline.  The green is from microcline.  There is an unidentified amphibole in the water spectral region, perhaps like a tremolite or something close.  Orbicular structures from albite are common exsolution structures as volcanic melts cool and the feldspars and silica separate.  The poppy jaspers from Morgan Hill to Madagascar are quartz radiolarite fossil jaspers.  Metamorphic alteration from subduction zones where these are found can produce secondary minerals such as actinolite, chlorite, and lizardite serpentine to form.

Checking the infrared water region, kambaba/kabamba contains dumortierite water.  No tremolite.