Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24755726-20150212042514/@comment-24755726-20150212232411

Judgekoo wrote: Agree and already knew about Amethyst and Rose being just a type of quartz gem and Garnet being a group of gems.

Which brings me to Pearl, technically pearls are naturally occuring, as most people define artificial as something that does not happen in nature naturally and/or something that has been influenced by man. The former statement is out due to the fact that pearls are a natural by product of most bivalves in trying to protect it's soft squishy insides. The latter statement is also out due to naturally occuring pearls are made without the influence of man. There are two types of artificial pearls, one type is a bivalve is forced to make pearls by man adding irritants inside it, called cultured pearls; the other is fake/immitation pearls that are made of different materials and not the CaCO3 kind, mostly just shiny plastics.

Also, CaCO3 does have a crystal form, it's called Calcite. But it's not meant for jewely as it is very brittle; it scores a 3 in the Mohs Hardness Scale, glass has a 5 and diamond a 10. That's why I put "artificially" in quotes. I'm saying it doesn't form in rock, instead created by a living creature. But I didn't know about calcite. Pearl is still the only gem quality form, however.