home/mineralworldagates/                                                                                                   Europe/Germany/ River Mosel Agates

In tertiary aged gravel, deposited by a so called “prehistoric River Mosel” 29 million years ago, were thes agates and quartz-varieties collected.

These gravel-deposits are situated around the township of Arenrath in the Eifel. The origin of these agates is not known exactly - one possibility for their origin are the agate-bearing vulcanic-rocks around Leitzweiler (a presentation for this theory is given here).

In these gravel a lot of different pebbles do occur:       -fortification-agates, mossy-agates, jasper, “uruguay-type-agate”, cloud-like agate, agate-pseudomorphs, silicated devonian shale with fossilisation, stromatholithic algae, petrified wood ...

During transportation and erosion the shape of the stones changed by edge smoothening. The originally colour was lost - but the contrasting in the banding was enforced. The phanerokristallinic formation in the center of the nodules became more transparent.