Perhaps not “foot-ball sized”, but still big enough to inspire envy when compared to my whiteschist garnets

Yesterday Chris over at Highly Allochthonous commented that he treats claims of large garnets with skepticism, having been disappointed on more than one occasion when the outcrop failed to show them as large as rumor said they’d be. Therefore I did the logical thing and e-mailed the author of yesterday’s paper to ask for photos.



He graciously agreed to share, and says that the photo on the left "is of a pyrope garnet from the classical locality Case Ramello in the Dora-Maira massif. This is one of the bigger ones (see watch for scale), but there are even bigger garnets there. The slight change in color comes from a decrease in Fe from core to rim. The second garnet is smaller, ca 4 cm in diameter coexisting with large phengite and sugary quartz.”

For contrast, the below photo is of a thin section of the Tasmanian whiteschist; the largest garnet in this photo (upper left corner) is 4 mm wide.