Just a few weeks earlier, in mid-February, Ben had returned home after soccer practice one Saturday morning and had decided to explore a field near his home in Rockforest East, near Mallow in Co Cork. That day, as he ran out to a freshly ploughed field, Ben spotted something in the mud. Within seconds, he realised what he had in his palm was genuine: a true cotterite, one of the rarest forms of quartz in the world. This tale has one character: a woman called Grace Elizabeth Cotter, who grew up in Knuttery, a townland near Rockforest in Cork. As Roycroft writes in the latest issue of the Irish Naturalists’ Journal, the 2024 specimen will forever be called the ‘Ben O’Driscoll Cotterite’.

Source: The Irish Times January 10, 2026 21:04 UTC