French Grand Antique Marble (field of view 10.9 cm across) - an attractive black & white tectonic limestone breccia from southern France. It has large to small angular fragments of black micritic limestone surrounded by whitish carbonate cement. It has been quarried for millennia (known Roman names for this rock include “Marmor Celticum” and “Marmor Aquitanicum”). The rock was exploited in Roman & Byzantine times, then abandoned and forgotten. Quarrying resumed after rediscovery in the 1700s, but the area is now exhausted (it’s an “extinct” rock). This material came from an old quarry at Aubert, just southeast of Moulis, Lez River Valley, southwest of Saint-Girons, western Ariège Department, central Pyrenees Mountains, far-southern France.