Rocks and minerals around Tsukuba Science City

Behind Tsukuba Science City, which lies on the Tsukuba Platform, are mountain ranges with Mt. Tsukuba being foremost among them, whose hard, rocky ground is different from that of the platform. The mountains continue north, and extend into the Yamizo Mountains and the southern part of the Abukuma Plateau. A coarse-grained variety of granitic rock called "pegmatite" is found around Mt. Tsukuba, that once yielded garnet and beryl. The Mesozoic strata that extends from the north of Mt. Tsukuba to the Yamizo Mountains occasionally intercalate stratiform manganese, ore deposits in which rhodonite and manganese garnet are formed when the deposits were thermally metamorphosed. The action of heat that metamorphosed manganese ore deposits also formed a tin-tungsten, ore a deposit which is well-known for its wolframite occurrence. Furthermore, lithium pegmatites are found within the granite in the southern part of the Abukuma Plateau, and is famous in Japan as a locality of rare lithium minerals such as spodumene, elbaite and pollucite.