The Rock Magnetic Bestiary#
The Rock Magnetic Bestiary (RMB) is a curated collection of rock magnetic data developed at the Institute for Rock Magnetism (IRM) focused on well-characterized synthetic and natural materials. Inspired by medieval bestiaries that cataloged natural entities through allegorical descriptions, the Rock Magnetic Bestiary aims facilitate the interpretation of the magnetic properties of natural samples by comparison with detailed reference datasets.
Rock Magnetic Bestiary data are being made available as MagIC data contributions together with in-development Jupyter notebooks that contain interactive visualizations of the data:
RMB Siderite This notebook presents and processes data from the carbonate portion of the Rock Magnetic Bestiary (RMB Minerals — RMB carbonates). It is focused on low-temperature remanence data from siderite.
RMB Titanomagnetite This notebook presents data from titanomagnetites within the Rock Magnetic Bestiary (RMB Minerals — RMB titanomagnetite).
Fig. 1 Wild goats depicted in the Aberdeen Bestiary, ca. 1200. Bestiaries were collections of fables and allegories, most often lavishly illustrated, featuring animals, plants, or even stones. The descriptive information about the natural world within such documents, including those preserved from Medieval Europe, represent a database of sorts. Image from The University of Aberdeen: The Aberdeen Bestiary Project#
See also
The first generation of the Rock Magnetic Bestiary was introduced in: Solheid, Peat; Jackson, Mike. (2001). IRM Quarterly, Volume 11, Number 3 (Fall 2001). The Rock-Magnetic Bestiary. https://hdl.handle.net/11299/171284.