The Beauty of Gembone

Like a snowflake, no two cut pieces of gembone are identical.

Whoever knew that pieces of fossilized dinosaur bone can be found on the ground like rocks in a creekbed, only in the desert. And that the fossils, or gembone, would be so colorful and beautiful when polished.

Gembone is essentially an agate created by the mineralization of the bones over hundreds of millions of years. Conditions had to be quite right for the bones to mineralize, rather than decompose. The ideal area to find gembone in the United States is the Colorado Plateau area of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, also known as the Four Corners Region.

As I search for interesting stones to work with, it’s been a revelation to create with this earth’s beauty.