Limestone
Rock made of calcite, aragonite
Common
A rock of calcium carbonate, calcite and aragonite, most of it built from corals and shells on shallow sea floors, and often full of fossils. White to grey; organic matter blackens it and iron turns it yellow or red.
Rock
- Kind of rock
- Chemical sedimentary rock
- Rock family
- Limestone and chalk
- Also contains
- Dolomite
- Deposits
- Skarn
- Shapes the land into
- Cave network, Sinkhole, Gorge, Karst
- How it forms
- Calcium carbonate comes out of water, mostly through living things, in shallow seas on continental shelves and platforms.
- Uses
- Burnt for lime and cement, cut as building stone, crushed for roads, spread on acid fields; dense kinds are sold as marble.
Crystallography
- Habits
- Massive, Granular
Physical properties
- Luster
- Dull
- Colors
- white, gray, yellow, black
- Transparency
- Opaque
Geology
- Origins
- Sedimentary
- Geography
- worldwide, England (Portland)
Classification
- Rarity
- Common
- Gem quality
- No
Sources
- Limestone. Wikipedia.
- C. R. Hallsworth, R. W. O’B. Knox, BGS Rock Classification Scheme, Volume 3: Classification of sediments and sedimentary rocks (Research Report RR 99-03). British Geological Survey, 1999.
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