Fungi?

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colohank
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Location: Fruita, Colorado, USA

Fungi?

Post by colohank »

If I take a picture of a bird I can't identify, I can compare my photo with the illustrations in The Sibley Guide to Birds, and usually determine what I've got. This fragment of pebble caught my eye because its fracture surface was so planar that it reflected a beam of light like a mirror -- almost like the the cleavage plane of a mineral. The rock is medium gray in color with an aphanitic texture -- an andesite or dacite, perhaps. What has me stumped are the myriad "egg yolks" dotting the fracture surface. Some kind of fungus, I suppose, but what exactly? Focus stack of eleven frames shot at 18 micron steps through Nikon 10X infinity microscope objective.
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Bob-O-Rama
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Re: Fungi?

Post by Bob-O-Rama »

Looks very ferrous to me. Could it just be rust?

colohank
Posts: 113
Joined: Sat Jul 24, 2021 6:07 pm
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Re: Fungi?

Post by colohank »

Or ferric. But they're round, domed, and shiny. I'd expect any alteration of mafic minerals in the rock to be either earthy or crystalline.

MarkSturtevant
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Re: Fungi?

Post by MarkSturtevant »

My vote would be for either bacteria colonies or slime mold. Slime mold are not really fungi, but are colonial protists.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

Bob-O-Rama
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Re: Fungi?

Post by Bob-O-Rama »

colohank wrote:
Mon Sep 27, 2021 1:55 pm
Or ferric. But they're round, domed, and shiny. I'd expect any alteration of mafic minerals in the rock to be either earthy or crystalline.
I was thinking beads of rusty dew. As little as 0.1% iron oxide / hydroxide in water will be opaque like that. They appear to be wet and without structure. Adding a small drop of peroxide would likely prove this out. It will generally bleach organic material, but it will not bleach iron compounds.

-- Bob

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