Not every stone we turn into jewelry comes from rocks we've collected ourselves. Occasionally, we come across a local rock dealer with some pieces that we just can't pass up. Recently, my dad went to a local show for rockhounds and found some fossilized dinosaur bone that he had to have. 

When he told me he'd picked up some fossilized dinosaur bone for me to turn into necklaces and earrings, I was pretty skeptical. I mean, why would you make jewelry out of a boring bone? Then I saw the vivid red color and the stunning veins of the piece that my dad found. Gorgeous.

I learned that smaller pieces of bone that are too shattered or damaged to end up in a museum can make for some beautiful, and rare, jewelry pieces. There's a reason we don't end up with many of these specimens. Collecting dinosaur bones fossils on federal or state land is illegal — we sourced ours from a reputable dealer who has private land in the area.

The color of fossilized dinosaur bone tends to be brown, gray, or tan, but a small percent are blue, yellow, orange, or red (like ours). They polished up into some pretty incredible pairs of earrings that sold out very quickly!

Fun fact: any time that the bone is fossilized with agate, it is known as gembone. The final color of the rock depends on the minerals that were present during the remineralization process. On some pieces, such as ours, the walls of the bone marrow are also replaced with minerals, but in a different color, so there is a seemingly random cell pattern on the stone. Most of the pieces of gembone that you find come from the Morrison Formation in southwestern Colorado. That's where our specimen came from too!

If you have a fossil that you'd like to turn into jewelry, you can send it to us! Shop the Bring Your Own Stone collection to start designing your piece. 

Curious about what other minerals we can polish up for you? Check our FAQ.