Ocean Jasper Crystal Butterfly Carving

Ocean jasper is a semi-precious gemstone that's formed from the alteration and silicification of volcanic rhyolite and tuff flows. It's also known as orbicular jasper and is characterized by its spherical growth pattern, called spherulite, which is created by radial growth around a central point. The spherulites, or orbs, are small spherical aggregates that are a few millimeters in diameter and can come in a variety of colors and color combinations. The background can be white, pink, green, red, or yellow, and the orbs can have a microscopic "garden of flowers" of quartz in a fine-grained silica matrix. Ocean jasper also contains quartz grains, star bursts of quartz points, and orbicular chalcedony, which produces a spherical patterning that looks like bull's eyes. 

Ocean jasper is believed to be from the Cretaceous period, about 63 million to 135 million years old, and is found underwater in the ocean along the intertidal shores of northeast Madagascar. It's prized by collectors due to its unique history and limited availability since the one and only place it exists on Earth is closed to future mining.