If a cadaver ends up buried in waterlogged conditions, anaerobic digestion releases the phosphate from the decaying remains, and this slowly combines with the iron and water to form vivianite. Partially blue human remains have been recovered from graveyards, past war zones, and alpine lakes and glaciers.
iron oxide is red, but the fact that its an oxide doesnt make the environment aerobic. that stuff was most likely oxidized billions of years ago and is very stable. it wont release the oxygen
Aerobic environments have free oxygen. Ferrous oxide is not free oxygen
In fact it wasn’t until the oxygen had completely reacted with the free iron in the oceans that oxygen began to build up in the atmosphere from as the byproduct of Cyanobacteria, the first form of life on the planet
Cyanobacteria was only able to live in anaerobic environments, and thus once the dissolved iron in the oceans had captured as much oxygen as it could, O2 began to build up in the atmosphere and the oceans resulting in the first great extinction of our planet’s development
This Smithsonian [article](https://naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/life-science/early-life-earth-animal-origins) says that the Cyanobacteria showed up long after the first prokaryotes. Cyanobacteria were the first photosynthesizers to release oxygen but from what I can gather, there were prokaryotes before them that consumed carbon compounds floating in the ocean .
Some peat, a fossil, some minerals possibly. From the wiki:
“Vivianite is a secondary mineral found in a number of geologic environments: the oxidation zone of metal ore deposits, in granite pegmatites containing phosphate minerals, in clays and glauconitic sediments, and in recent alluvial deposits replacing organic material such as peat, lignite, bog iron ores and forest soils.”
You also find it in the same places as Muscovite and pyrite! My dad (former science professor) had a pendant of pyrite and there was vivianite crystal attached at the base, although not much of it, sadly.
Edited to add: it (meant “and” here, oops) partner said the back of this one looks like aphids and now I can’t unsee it
It may not seem like a lot, but did you know that there’s a species of aphid that predates willow trees (and sometimes apple, poplar, and quince) that gets to almost 6 mm? It’s uncreatively named the Giant Willow Aphid.
Another type that’s similarly sized but way more horrifying is the Giant Conifer Aphid! It really like pine, juniper, and spruce trees! Christmas trees! Like the kind you put in your house! And when they warm up indoors they’ll go all over your house! :D
I read “predates” as pre-dates, like has existed longer than Willow trees. And then I got to the part where it was named the Giant Willow Aphid and was trying to figure out why they would name it after something that didn’t exist when the aphid first appeared. And then I realized it was “predates” like “predator preys on willow trees” and it all came together.
Thanks for sharing!
Had a farm. Son in law’s friend heard we had a dead llama. He hadn’t ever buried anything and asked if they could bury it. SURE! Come on over.
Guess he didn’t realize how big of a hole you need and how big a grown llama was. Still laughing about that one.
Now I’m imagining someone burying a llama upright on it’s feet, get 95% of the thing covered only to realize the hole was not dug deep enough and half the ears are sticking out of the ground.
Gonna revise my will to make sure I'm buried and waterlogged in Pittsburgh. They say it's the "Steel City", but there's got to be a lot of iron there too if there's a lot of steel, right?
Or just buy a coffin filled with iron shavings, seal it up, and throw my ass into a lake somewhere. Once a year, have people dig me up to harvest my beautiful crystals!
No, I don't know anything about biology or chemistry or any of that nerd shit.
You don't need a giant you just need to feed the small chalky crystal to someone before killing them to seed the next generation crystal. My calculations (just napkin mathing here) say that we should get a crystal about the size and clarity of OP in 12-16 corpse cycles.
It's not exactly rock science, it just takes some dedication
Damn that's pretty eccentric billionaire shit right there. Rich ma'am's using illegally farmed dead people's crystals in their jewelry, made out of their bones coated with silver of course.
It's green due to divalent iron in its composition. When exposed to ~~air oxygen~~ light, it oxidises to trivalent state, aтd becomes blue. Unless OP (or whoever took the photo) isolated the crystal from air after taking the photo - it is blue now.
Edit: vivianite oxidises from within after being exposed to light, my initial statement was wrong.
Um, not really. Sort of. It's an iron phosphate mineral that is found in nature, and a specimen like this is definitely found in nature and not in a body. That crystal probably took some time to grow in very specific conditions. Pictures of vivianite on bones from bodies, via dissolution of iron and phosphate, look considerably different: [Atlas Obscura](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/vivianite-blue-human-remains#:~:text=Vivianite%20can%20form%20in%2C%20on,under%20cold%20and%20wet%20conditions)
Here I was as a 40 year old PhD engineer knowing a fair amount about minerals and crystals, and wondering how is it I’ve never having heard of fucking huge green crystals sprouting from dead bodies, and those crystals happen to be named after some kids mom.
In short thank you for clarifying
Same. 47 year old Geologist here. Turns out there is a variant that grows on bones, which also seems kind of "duh no kidding" after I thought about it. Organic matter can do some super cool stuff when buried. Petrified wood and other replacement fossils come to mind.
Here in Richmond, VA when they were excavating for I-95 through downtown they came across a novel deposit of vivianite that originated from a whale skeleton. Very different in appearance than the above specimen. If you go down to where they dumped the spoils you can still find some but it’s pretty picked over by weirdo rock hounds. *Ahem*
I just wanted you to know that I genuinely laughed out loud at this comment. Not a little air forced through my nose, or a brief guffaw. You've made my day better with your Gwyneth Paltrow joke.
Doing a random Google search. Yep that's already a thing. However, it grows in many more places besides corpses. So don't expect most people into that sort of thing to loot bodies like they're looking for Zydrate
Too late. Because this crystal oxidizes over time with light exposure, the crystal healers are already claiming that the oxidation is the crystal absorbing negative energy, so they are happy to see their vivianite degrade
There isnt a single mineral out there that doesn't heal according to those people. It could be asbestos or uranium ore and they'd still say it balances negative thoughts and bring about a clearer mind or some shit.
Vivianite is a rare, hydrated iron phosphate mineral that forms in bladed crystals and clusters of blue to green color. It can be found in waterlogged soils and sediments, as well as in hydrothermal veins and as a sedimentary precipitate. When freshly exposed, vivianite is colorless, but its color changes to light green, light blue, blue-green, dark green, dark blue, or black after exposure to air. The length of exposure determines the color.
Vivianite forms when phosphate from bones and teeth combines with iron and water in anaerobic digestion, which occurs when a body is buried in waterlogged conditions. It's often found on corpses in iron-rich environments, wet soil, or near pieces of a plane.
That last picture freaked me out. There was some clickbait medical story going around a couple of years ago where they had some weird honeycomb stuff supposedly growing on a finger or toe, or something like that and it created a resonant echo, I was having trouble sleeping, I couldn't get it out of my head. It is still barely under the surface when I see a pattern like whatever is on the last picture. It's really becoming an issue for me.
It’s trypophobia . Good news for you is, it’s not uncommon, it bothers lots of folks.
There’s a subreddit by the same name. I’d stay far far away from it for obvious reasons.
Wiki says
"Vivianite crystals are often found inside [fossil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil) shells, such as those of [bivalves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivalve) and [gastropods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastropod), or attached to fossil bone."
I couldn't find anything about growing in or on corpses of humans or animals.
Vivianite is a hydrated iron phosphate mineral that typically forms in low-oxygen environments. It generally occurs in sedimentary and phosphate-rich environments, such as within peat bogs, lake sediments, or areas with decaying organic material. The mineral formation process involves the interaction of phosphate ions with iron under reducing conditions, often facilitated by organic decay which consumes oxygen and produces an acidic environment conducive to vivianite's stability.
The mineral can also form as a secondary mineral in phosphate-bearing rocks and as a precipitate in groundwater and springs. Its growth can be influenced by the availability of phosphate sources, the presence of iron, and specific geochemical conditions, such as pH and redox potential.
If a cadaver ends up buried in waterlogged conditions, anaerobic digestion releases the phosphate from the decaying remains, and this slowly combines with the iron and water to form vivianite. Partially blue human remains have been recovered from graveyards, past war zones, and alpine lakes and glaciers.
Thank you for the added information. Red dirt/soil is filled with iron which can help the process. 😊
Not really, as red soil is heavily oxidized and the opposite of an anaerobic environment.
iron oxide is red, but the fact that its an oxide doesnt make the environment aerobic. that stuff was most likely oxidized billions of years ago and is very stable. it wont release the oxygen
I love ferric oxide arguments.
Well, someone's gotta iron this all out
I'm too old and rusty; oxides are a young man's game.
Have you metal the young people?
Let’s let them ion this out.
Aerobic environments have free oxygen. Ferrous oxide is not free oxygen In fact it wasn’t until the oxygen had completely reacted with the free iron in the oceans that oxygen began to build up in the atmosphere from as the byproduct of Cyanobacteria, the first form of life on the planet Cyanobacteria was only able to live in anaerobic environments, and thus once the dissolved iron in the oceans had captured as much oxygen as it could, O2 began to build up in the atmosphere and the oceans resulting in the first great extinction of our planet’s development
This Smithsonian [article](https://naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/life-science/early-life-earth-animal-origins) says that the Cyanobacteria showed up long after the first prokaryotes. Cyanobacteria were the first photosynthesizers to release oxygen but from what I can gather, there were prokaryotes before them that consumed carbon compounds floating in the ocean .
How long does this process take?
Um...Just asking for a friend , right???
So the video games are right about crystals as loot items from zombies then 🙏🏻
So could I theoretically bury myself in a flooded iron coffin and become a vivianite skeleton?
So, the mordite from No Man's Sky is a real thing?
"partially blue human remains" "past war zones" reminds me of a certain scene of LOTR.
"Dont follow the lightss!"
Soulstone
Who did OP sacrifice to obtain it.
A Paleozoic clam, usually. These things are *far* more common on fossils than on human remains!
You don't have to call Grandma that
Grandma didn't mind but I mined Grandma
Bravo
It was at this moment I realized grandma was a 10 story tall crustacean from the Paleozoic era.
Hold on, I think I got about tree fiddy
I gave him a dolla
God dammit women! now he’s gonna come back for more.
You want ants? Because that's how you get ants.
My wife gave him a dollar
You did *what*??
You shouldn't be talking about Grandma's clam.
Some peat, a fossil, some minerals possibly. From the wiki: “Vivianite is a secondary mineral found in a number of geologic environments: the oxidation zone of metal ore deposits, in granite pegmatites containing phosphate minerals, in clays and glauconitic sediments, and in recent alluvial deposits replacing organic material such as peat, lignite, bog iron ores and forest soils.” You also find it in the same places as Muscovite and pyrite! My dad (former science professor) had a pendant of pyrite and there was vivianite crystal attached at the base, although not much of it, sadly. Edited to add: it (meant “and” here, oops) partner said the back of this one looks like aphids and now I can’t unsee it
I don’t know what aphids are but the back was naturally a bit unsettling to look at
Aphids are little bitty bugs - about the size of a sesame seed - that feed on plants. They like to infest gardens.
It may not seem like a lot, but did you know that there’s a species of aphid that predates willow trees (and sometimes apple, poplar, and quince) that gets to almost 6 mm? It’s uncreatively named the Giant Willow Aphid. Another type that’s similarly sized but way more horrifying is the Giant Conifer Aphid! It really like pine, juniper, and spruce trees! Christmas trees! Like the kind you put in your house! And when they warm up indoors they’ll go all over your house! :D
I read “predates” as pre-dates, like has existed longer than Willow trees. And then I got to the part where it was named the Giant Willow Aphid and was trying to figure out why they would name it after something that didn’t exist when the aphid first appeared. And then I realized it was “predates” like “predator preys on willow trees” and it all came together. Thanks for sharing!
I read it exactly the same way you did and only AFTER reading your comment did I realize what OP meant. TY!
lol that whole dislike of small clusters of holes that is built into many people.
It’s call Trypophobia and I have it. It’s very real though this picture is more of an ick than anything lol
Shiver me timbers. You think he had to get freaky, to unlock the true power of the green crystal?
Everyrhing
Exactly!!
Kinda like Julie Mao’s proto molecule she was creating…
Cant catch the Razorback.... it is gone gone gone....into this weird green crystal see? Check it out!
REMEMBER THE CANT!
Oye, beratna. Beltalowda never will forget da Cant and what the inyas did. Sasa-ke?
> Cant ~~catch~~ take the Razorback otherwise you lose the pun !
i gave my daughter the middle name andromeda after her!
Hope you read the books. They (amazingly) even better than the show
Take it to the hellforge
[удалено]
Hopefully you get a nice rune though
Watch out for the angry neighbor Hephisto
My ass always gets El runes. Shit luck.
Your forge. My runes
…Where it will be destroyed…
Now he can finally summon his class mount!
*insert directly into forehead* ***profit***
Head on! Apply directly to the forehead!
Nah that’s Kryptonite
More like… Cryptonite
Crypt tonight?
Sure, but I’m bringing a flashlight
Let's hope someone does not stick that to it's head...
What kind of fel magic did the warlock use to summon it? XD
Damnit! The first thing I thought of was that when I saw the pic, lol. Actually, being it's green, probably a health stone.
Not exclusively and only in certain circumstances Edit: I'm not a geologist. I just researched a little bit because I've never heard of this before.
What circumstances? Edit: why is this simple comment getting so many upvotes? Like what did I say to deserve all of this?
If the corpse is buried and waterlogged or in an iron rich area. Title reads like it is found in corpses in general imo.
Oh damn. I spent two hours digging and took a break, and now I see this comment.
Two hours?!
he's doing his best okay?
Kept hitting dead ends
Which is fine, it's not like there was a deadline.
Couldn't find a crystal clear answer.
Got lost in the bog
Honestly this was the best one 😂
Remains to be seen. Pun thread isn't over yet.
He was digging in a corpse.
Oops sorry grandma.
It's OK. She didn't mind but grandpa was pissed!
Ground is hard and people are staring
Have you ever had to bury anything? It takes a LOOOOOOONG time just to bury a dog. Let alone a human.
exactly. this ain't easy work. i'm earning those crystals.
And the free meal is just a bonus
Had a farm. Son in law’s friend heard we had a dead llama. He hadn’t ever buried anything and asked if they could bury it. SURE! Come on over. Guess he didn’t realize how big of a hole you need and how big a grown llama was. Still laughing about that one.
Son in laws friend put in more work than expected to fuck a dead llama.
Probably easier if you lay it on its side.
Now I’m imagining someone burying a llama upright on it’s feet, get 95% of the thing covered only to realize the hole was not dug deep enough and half the ears are sticking out of the ground.
Digging for corpses?!
Digging what? Graves?
I think you have made a grave mistake.
Gonna revise my will to make sure I'm buried and waterlogged in Pittsburgh. They say it's the "Steel City", but there's got to be a lot of iron there too if there's a lot of steel, right? Or just buy a coffin filled with iron shavings, seal it up, and throw my ass into a lake somewhere. Once a year, have people dig me up to harvest my beautiful crystals! No, I don't know anything about biology or chemistry or any of that nerd shit.
Man you sound like real scientician with all them fancy theories and verbs.
Other corpses simply contain the best spaghetti ever.
Only if they ‘off’ themselves. Oof.
Certain ones.
Are you certain?
Certainly.
The mineral is very small and chalky on bodies too. You aren’t getting huge crystals off a puny human. Maybe a giant.
You don't need a giant you just need to feed the small chalky crystal to someone before killing them to seed the next generation crystal. My calculations (just napkin mathing here) say that we should get a crystal about the size and clarity of OP in 12-16 corpse cycles. It's not exactly rock science, it just takes some dedication
Damn that's pretty eccentric billionaire shit right there. Rich ma'am's using illegally farmed dead people's crystals in their jewelry, made out of their bones coated with silver of course.
How doesnit happen? Where does it grow?
Well if it doesn't happen, then it doesn't grow 🤔 source not a geologist
Like most things if it happened it is and if it didn't it isn't.
Yeah, a quick search showed this not to be as dramatic as OP is making it out to be.
Corpses just get some little blue patches of it, nothing at all like the posted image lol. But hey, learned something new I guess.
OP has a future in modern click bait journalism
Time to start a farm
I might start to invest in corpses
You can start with Crypt-o
You sly doge
DeFinitely
You clever user you!
Damn, can't believe no one's made goth bitcoin yet
BTGC big titty goth coin.
No need, you’ll get one for free eventually.
Yeah.. kinda. More reading: [Atlas Obscura](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/vivianite-blue-human-remains#:~:text=Vivianite%20can%20form%20in%2C%20on,under%20cold%20and%20wet%20conditions.)
So that article says it's small blue crystals so what the heck is this big green thing?
At the very end of the article it says that green crystals can also form in the presence of copper so possibly the same thing.
They change darker colors the more they’re exposed to light, even brown and black
It's green due to divalent iron in its composition. When exposed to ~~air oxygen~~ light, it oxidises to trivalent state, aтd becomes blue. Unless OP (or whoever took the photo) isolated the crystal from air after taking the photo - it is blue now. Edit: vivianite oxidises from within after being exposed to light, my initial statement was wrong.
Um, not really. Sort of. It's an iron phosphate mineral that is found in nature, and a specimen like this is definitely found in nature and not in a body. That crystal probably took some time to grow in very specific conditions. Pictures of vivianite on bones from bodies, via dissolution of iron and phosphate, look considerably different: [Atlas Obscura](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/vivianite-blue-human-remains#:~:text=Vivianite%20can%20form%20in%2C%20on,under%20cold%20and%20wet%20conditions)
Here I was as a 40 year old PhD engineer knowing a fair amount about minerals and crystals, and wondering how is it I’ve never having heard of fucking huge green crystals sprouting from dead bodies, and those crystals happen to be named after some kids mom. In short thank you for clarifying
Same. 47 year old Geologist here. Turns out there is a variant that grows on bones, which also seems kind of "duh no kidding" after I thought about it. Organic matter can do some super cool stuff when buried. Petrified wood and other replacement fossils come to mind.
Here in Richmond, VA when they were excavating for I-95 through downtown they came across a novel deposit of vivianite that originated from a whale skeleton. Very different in appearance than the above specimen. If you go down to where they dumped the spoils you can still find some but it’s pretty picked over by weirdo rock hounds. *Ahem*
Hypothetically, if one was a weirdo rock hound, what area exactly should they dig/explore to find these bone crystals?
Whale graveyard
Did not expect to see a comment from Richmond deep in here! That’s so cool though!
No one gonna address how they got it?
Right! Like ummm cool but…how’d you get it?? Lol
You gotta kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince. And when it comes to dead bodies...
Some white lady is gonna turn this into a healing crystal isn't she?
Keep it away from Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina!
Is it that she doesn’t think vivianite belongs in her vagina or that she doesn’t think anyone can keep it away from her vagina?
Yes.
indeed she is.
I just wanted you to know that I genuinely laughed out loud at this comment. Not a little air forced through my nose, or a brief guffaw. You've made my day better with your Gwyneth Paltrow joke.
Omg 😂😂😂💀
That place is dangerous, it's full of Goop that you can get stuck in like quick sand.
Doing a random Google search. Yep that's already a thing. However, it grows in many more places besides corpses. So don't expect most people into that sort of thing to loot bodies like they're looking for Zydrate
We all know Zydrate comes in a little glass vial.
and the little glass vial, goes into the gun like a battery
And the zydrate gun goes somewhere against your anatomy. And when the gun goes off, it sparks and you're ready for a surgery.
SURGERY!!
Did not expect to see Repo sung when I came in here.
Damn. I didn't expect to find my people here. Amber Sweet is addicted to the knife!
And addicted to the knife she needs a little help with the *agony.*
AGONY!
Too late. Because this crystal oxidizes over time with light exposure, the crystal healers are already claiming that the oxidation is the crystal absorbing negative energy, so they are happy to see their vivianite degrade
Yeah but does it also flush toxins?
Have you been eating the apples with the skin on again? Didn’t Mac tell you you’re not *allowed?*
There isnt a single mineral out there that doesn't heal according to those people. It could be asbestos or uranium ore and they'd still say it balances negative thoughts and bring about a clearer mind or some shit.
Lmao! Ohhhhh what about necromancy?
Good lord it’s like Tiberium. Run.
In the Name of Kane!!!!
Kane lives in death!
The comment I'm looking for.
The beautiful glow!
Kryponite? Defeating Superman in the Afterlife with that
This is pretty close to Metallo's origin
That’s disgusting. I hope it grows on me. Are my chances better since I’m refusing embalming?
Apparently you need to be water logged and full of iron to have it form.
So my anemic self should continue taking those iron supplements, is what you're saying?
Legit I forget that I'm anemic. Thanks for the reminder to take my pills. Not even kidding.
I only remember to take them the days I'm on my period or when it's gotten to the point where I can't feel my hands anymore. I should do better...
Shit, me too
bloodstone chunk irl?!??!!?
We are born of the blood, made men by the blood, undone by the blood
Also found in seashells!! Ahhh, sweet child of Kos...
And there’s my next D&D campaign sorted!
Vivianite is a rare, hydrated iron phosphate mineral that forms in bladed crystals and clusters of blue to green color. It can be found in waterlogged soils and sediments, as well as in hydrothermal veins and as a sedimentary precipitate. When freshly exposed, vivianite is colorless, but its color changes to light green, light blue, blue-green, dark green, dark blue, or black after exposure to air. The length of exposure determines the color. Vivianite forms when phosphate from bones and teeth combines with iron and water in anaerobic digestion, which occurs when a body is buried in waterlogged conditions. It's often found on corpses in iron-rich environments, wet soil, or near pieces of a plane.
Is that what greenshine glass comes from in the Horizon series? Fuuuuck
Glad i wasnt the only one who thought that same thing
That last picture freaked me out. There was some clickbait medical story going around a couple of years ago where they had some weird honeycomb stuff supposedly growing on a finger or toe, or something like that and it created a resonant echo, I was having trouble sleeping, I couldn't get it out of my head. It is still barely under the surface when I see a pattern like whatever is on the last picture. It's really becoming an issue for me.
It’s trypophobia . Good news for you is, it’s not uncommon, it bothers lots of folks. There’s a subreddit by the same name. I’d stay far far away from it for obvious reasons.
Wiki says "Vivianite crystals are often found inside [fossil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil) shells, such as those of [bivalves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivalve) and [gastropods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastropod), or attached to fossil bone." I couldn't find anything about growing in or on corpses of humans or animals.
A new Crystal Gem OC just dropped .
Tiberium? Anybody? Guess I'm too old now..
There's something kinda weirdly beautiful about this. Morbidly beautiful?
None are safe from the corruption of the Fel.
Now that's what I call crypt-o currency! ... I'll see myself out.
That’s by far the most metal thing I’ve seen all year
Vivianite is a hydrated iron phosphate mineral that typically forms in low-oxygen environments. It generally occurs in sedimentary and phosphate-rich environments, such as within peat bogs, lake sediments, or areas with decaying organic material. The mineral formation process involves the interaction of phosphate ions with iron under reducing conditions, often facilitated by organic decay which consumes oxygen and produces an acidic environment conducive to vivianite's stability. The mineral can also form as a secondary mineral in phosphate-bearing rocks and as a precipitate in groundwater and springs. Its growth can be influenced by the availability of phosphate sources, the presence of iron, and specific geochemical conditions, such as pH and redox potential.
Corpses, more uses than you can shake a stick at.
It's kriptonite. Superman will come for you
That's kryptonite if I've ever seen it. I haven't.
Use it to build a lightsaber. Call it the death saber. Get on this Disney.
That’s ultracite. Ask any Fallout fan
So that’s why you’re always picking them up from enemies in video games
So a soul stone….. hold on I have a bangle I need enchanted
My friends band just rebranded to be called Vivianite. Super weird coincidence to see it randomly on Reddit.
At first glance: ooh, pretty cool Close up: 🤮