%20(1).png)
Stone
The crust of our planet is made of stone.
The mountains, the ground, the rocks and the bottom of the sea are made of stone that has gone through many processes since the formation of the earth from a stellar cloud of dust, gas and plasma 4.568 million years ago.
Stones owe their color, hardness, tenacity and other characteristics to their origin and to the minerals that form them.
_MGM_jpg_JPG.jpg)
Origin
We call igneous rocks those formed by the heat of the earth's core. They are magma or lava, molten rock, which has cooled and become solid, and they are the most abundant in the earth's surface. In Dilao, you can see sculptures of obsidian, tezontle and basalt, which are igneous rocks.
Rocks also wear down and accumulate over thousands of years to form new rocks, which we call sedimentary, because they are made by the sediments of other rocks. Travertine and limestone are examples of sedimentary rocks you'll find here.
When a rock goes through a new process of heat and pressure that transforms it, the type of rock that results is classified as metamorphic. Marble, granite, jasper, breccia and jade are metamorphic rocks that you will see in Dilao.
There is a fourth type of rock according to its origin: those that fall from space to Earth in the form of meteorites, which form tektites when mixed at high temperatures with terrestrial minerals. We have a few in our rock collection, but none that are part of a sculpture yet.
Minerals
The most abundant rock-forming elements on our planet are oxygen and silicon. When combined, they form silicon oxides or silicates, which make up 90 percent of the earth's crust, often in combination with other minerals.
The most common silicates in rocks are feldspars, quartz, olivines, pyroxenes, amphiboles, granites, and micas. The different granites, serpentine and quartz that you can see in Dilao are silica mineral formations. Other abundant elements on the surface of our planet are aluminum, iron, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, titanium, and phosphorus, all of which oxidize to form different types of minerals.
The rest of the elements in the earth's crust are present in amounts of less than one percent. The minerals of the earth's crust that are not based on silicon are called non-silicates, and they can be native elements in a pure state, which are extremely rare, such as copper, gold or silver; sulfides, which are combinations of sulfur of varied chemistry and structure and form a large number of different minerals despite the fact that sulfur is not an abundant element.
Sulfides are usually soft, and many dissolve easily in water; these dissolved minerals can then be redeposited, creating sedimentary rock reservoirs. Examples of sulfides are pyrite and cinnabar.
Halides are minerals that contain fluorine, chlorine, iodine or bromine oxides, an example of which is table salt.
Carbonates contain carbon and oxygen as the main elements. They tend to be brittle, many have rhombohedral cleavage, and all are acid-reactive, so field geologists often carry dilute hydrochloric acid to distinguish carbonates from non-carbonates. The most common carbonate mineral is calcite, which is the main component of limestone sedimentary rocks and metamorphic marble. The same material forms eggshells and sea shells.
Sulfates are formed by the evaporation of saline waters, but they can also be found in hydrothermal vein systems or as sulfide oxidation products. The most abundant example is plaster. Finally, phosphates are a diverse group that forms from an oxide of phosphorus. Turquoise is a type of phosphate.
The mountains of Tepoztlán, which belong to the Chichinautzin mountain range, are made up of andesites and basalts, rocks of volcanic origin that began to be deposited 20,000 years ago. Later, they were transformed by tectonic movements that broke and separated the rocks and, on this, lava from other volcanoes once again fell. The wind and water have also eroded the stones and changed their shape.
Mexico is a country with a huge variety of stones, which are extracted from quarries and cut with large machines for use in construction all over the world.