Dean Caldwell of Cicero has been mining opal and obsidian for six months of the year in Mexico for the last 15 years. Last year, he pulled an opal out of the side of a mountain that weighs in at 1,253 ...

The remote town of Coober Pedy, Australia, is home to about 2,000 people, many of whom gravitated there to mine opal. The extreme climate of the Outback meant residents had to find creative ways to ...

Gemstones are precious, especially when they come filled with dinosaur bones. Back in the 1980s, a miner unearthed a slew of fossils preserved in opals in an opal mine near Lightning Ridge in ...

It's freezing cold, scorching hot and a source of Australia's opals. Here's what life's like when you have to jury-rig even the most basic tech to survive. Claire Reilly was a video host, journalist ...

(CNN)-- A hunt for precious gemstones revealed the first fossil evidence of a dinosaur herd, including a previously undiscovered dinosaur species, in Australia. The new dinosaur fossil was found in an ...

Opalised fossils from Lightning Ridge, N.S.W, Australia. From the collection of the Australian Opal Center. Clockwise from top left: freshwater snail; plesiosaur tooth; crocodile tooth; pine cone; ...

The beautiful optical properties of the gemstone opal are the result of tiny amounts of uranium present when the stones were formed, say researchers in Australia. They claim that their work could lead ...

The remote town of Coober Pedy, Australia, is home to about 2,000 people, many of whom gravitated there to mine opal. The extreme climate of the Outback meant residents had to find creative ways to ...