Sand from Bretignolles-sur-Mer (France, the Bay of Biscay) is famous among sand collectors because of its unusual mineralogy and appearance. The sand is composed of spinel, magnetite, epidote, garnet, staurolite, ilmenite, K-feldspar, quartz, zircon, corundum, apatite, titanite, rutile, etc. It is reddish or even purplish in color.
Many sand samples contain these minerals but in the vast majority of cases all other minerals besides quartz and feldspar occur in very small quantities. Here they clearly form the majority. Such sand type is called heavy mineral sand. These sands tend to be fine-grained. Getting sharp images which still show every single grain is a tough task but I hope you can get a general overview what kind of beautiful and colorful crystals such sands contain.
I recommend to check out the gigapan of the same sand sample.
Sand from Bretignolles-sur-Mer. There are more interesting minerals in this sand but here I numbered those that should be recognizable in this picture: 1 — spinel (iron-bearing), 2 — almandine (garnet), 3 — staurolite, 4 — may be titanite (sphene), 5 — K-feldspar, 6 — epidote, 7 — quartz, 8 — magnetite. The width of the view is 5 mm.
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