Rough Opal

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A gemstone almost alive with an intense inner fire, opals have held the attention of humans for many thousands of years. From Egypt and Classical Greece to China and the Americas, ancient civilizations valued the beauty of opal, but it is only in recent history that we've come to understand the complex nature of this unique gemstone. This specimen is a fragment of rough opalized plant material from Lightning Ridge in NSW, Australia. Australia is the largest producer of opals in the world. The opal fields here date to the Cretaceous when Central Australia was home to an enormous inland sea, known to science as the Eromanga Basin. It dates to roughly 110,000,000 years old. Show more