shale - hard green Lower Cambrian shale - UNIT OF 5 STUDENT SPECIMENS

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Teaching hand specimen of Lower Cambrian hard green shale from the Harkless Formation, White Mountains, C
alifornia
This shale is from the Lower Cambrian Harkless Formation in the White Mountains of California. These specimens are a fairly hard shale, so they will not crumble during student examination as will more fissile shales. Fissile refers to the behavior of shales that weather out as a pile of loose platy flakes. This particular shale exhibits platy parting - it looks like a shale in the outcrop - though it has been slightly metamorphosed.
Students should know the basic sedimentary rocks in order of increasing grain size, from mudstone and shale, siltstone, sandstone to conglomerate and coquina. Shales differ from mudstones in that they are more compressed, form flat plates, and are less likely to disappear in a poof of dust when dropped by a student. This shale is fairly hard and should stand up to student examinations.
Some shales closely resemble slate, metamorphosed from shale. To distinguish a shale from a slate, the test is to lick it. The shale will smell muddy. The slate won't. Since this shale varies in hardness, some specimens will smell only faintly muddy when wet. When students identify this shale, I would ask students for the reason for their identification. If they called this a shale because it smells muddy when wet, or if they called it a slate because it does not smell muddy, I would accept either answer.
The field photo shows the shale outcrop, where it has been tilted almost vertical.
You are buying a unit of five student specimens.
The photo is representative of what we ship.
We really don't like the tiny finger nail-sized specimens offered to students, as we feel these are too small to see rock textures and too small for examining the identifying characteristics of a mineral. We collect these specimens so that five specimens, or possibly six, will fit in a small flat rate box, and we keep the price low, as we know these will be used in a classroom. For teachers we count like a baker and a dozen is more than 12, since you will always need a few spares.
If you are a teacher, let us know.
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