Mini Garnet in Arfvedsonite and Yellow Serpentine Bear Carvings

The word ‘garnet’ comes from the Latin word granatus, which means ‘seed-like,’ a reference to the common appearance of garnets as discrete small red rounded crystals that look like pomegranate seeds embedded in rock.

Arfvedsonite is a rare mineral which forms in plutonic rock. This is an igneous rock which slowly crystallises and solidifies underground from liquid magma.

Serpentine minerals form where peridotite, dunite, and other ultramafic rocks undergo hydrothermal metamorphism. Ultramafic rocks are rare at Earth's surface but are abundant at the boundary between the base of the oceanic crust and the upper mantle.