College first, mineral dealer on the side until you have a degree to fall back on. Chemistry, material science, geology etc. are all worthwhile that will provide access to a career if our interest or circumstances change.To echo what others have said: it is a long and sometimes not very rewarding ...

They are, indeed, "mineral growths" as Ralph points out. We have a number of these concretions from the Clarion-Clipperton  fracture zone in the Pacific Ocean, depth about 15,000 feet (!!) The late Pete Dunn analyzed several of these for me many years ago, and they were comprised ...

A stalwart field collector, dealer, mineralogist, author, teacher, curator. George did it all and was so generous with his time and his knowledge. He even played piano for my kids during his last visit. So sad to learn of his passing.

I agree as well:"Schemnitz".

I have many dozens of zeunerite/metazeunerite specimens from Majuba, collected over many years, and none show any fluorescence. I would be happy to analyze one (EDS) at no charge if your would like to send it along.

So sorry to hear this. I did the Franklin, NJ show for many years (in the good old days), and David always had interesting things, fairly priced, and with lots of knowledge thrown in for free...

Can't we just call them varieties of general "hydrocarbon" ?

Frank - just trying to anchor the usage of "POL" to various manufacturers' literature, probably the only place I have seen it used consistently. They (the manufacturers) seem to think any POLarizing microscope is worthy of the "POL" designation in their advertising literature. 

Likely tenorite which occurs in the area around Lordsburg

I have a number of POLs, and all are associated with a manufacture's model name like the one pictured here, a Leitz  Panphot POL Photomicroscope.  Not a glossary-worthy name, I think.

Once the beam is generated, you need a detector to capture the X-ray photons and an analyzer (computer system) to categorize the energy of the X-ray photons generated by the electron beam hitting the material. XRF used X-rays instead of electrons to generate photons, and different types of ...

Perhaps clinochlore, not mica?

We use a scanning electron microscope (SEM) as the electron beam generator for EDS. This is most common, I believe.

I have over 125 wavellite specimens ..... all from different localities! The collection includes the first one I ever acquired as a kid, purchased from Walker's Minerals in New York City in the 1960s. I sold the collection about 10 years ago, but the dealer returned it to me saying he didn't have ...

Looks like blueberries and puff pastry!

You can search for radioactive minerals in Mindat by using the "Search" feature. Click on "Search", then click on "Search by Chemistry", and click on U and O in the periodic table. You will be presented with a long list of uranium minerals (you can do likewise for Thorium as well). Another ...

I responded to this back in February: Images, locality descriptions and many other features on Mindat are copyrighted, but all not necessarily by Mindat. We use the structural diagrams by permission from American Mineralogist Structure Database, and it is their permission you would ...

The greenish mineral on the outside of the geodes is typically celadonite. However, most of the Brazilian amethyst geodes are painted with a slurry of concrete that is tinted to resemble the original outside color, and that concrete coating serves not only to stabilize the sometimes-fragile thin ...

Most of the Coyote Peak rare samples were provided over time to Forrest Cureton by Gerry Czamanske and Dick Erd, typically labeled as coming from 77-CYP-125, 133, and 134, as well as 77-CYP 15 and 77-CYP-LZ.  Erdite and Bartonite  were XRD-confirmed, while orickite, coyoteite and ...

Although color is unreliable, most of the analytical work we have done on mottramite specimens suggests the darker material (ie nearly black) is cuprian descloizite.

I spent many hours in the past arguing with the late Dr. Pete Dunn about dividing specimens. At the Smithsonian, he was adamant that without sufficient matrix and associated species, a specimen was just an isolated example of a mineral without its scientific context. On the other hand, he readily ...

Based on the locality, I suggest that this may be sarabauite veins exposed in an acid-etched calcite matrix. Forrest Cureton collected several thousand pounds of material from this locality in 1978, and I have several dynamite boxes full of the remaining stock. While there is occasionally creamy ...

Received the following from a petrologist. Anyone willing to go through these, add references, and update the localities?Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,please find two papers (open access) on rare element deposits in carbonatites and pegmatites addressed by a mineralogical terrain analysis of the ...

Bravo, Jeff. Good detective work!

There will also be a series of nine (9) lectures on Saturday, February 10 sponsored by the Friends of Mineralogy and the TGMS. Planned speakers include: •Michael Menzies – Gem pegmatites •David London - Gem-Forming Cavities in Pegmatites •Robert F. Martin - Cleavelandite: only ...

Agreed - Likely the mineral tremolite, variety hexagonite.

See: http://astro.wsu.edu/worthey/astro/html/im-meteor/classif.htmlfor a simplified classification chart that should answer most of your questions.

Afghanite occurs in many other places in the world (Germany, Russia, Italy, U.S. etc.), color typically blue, occasionally clear as well. Without question, however, the best crystals do come from Afghanistan, where it has been found in several places. And I agree with the earlier responses, do ...

Identical material I acquired in 1994 from Jim Minette gave the exact same locality: "West Baker Mine"

Apophyllite group minerals are not zeolites, but they are often associated with true zeolites like the stilbites, chabazites etc. But they would probably do no harm to fresh water environments. I use petrified wood, obsidian, untreated agate etc. without any issue after many years.

Handheld XRF results are very unreliable on a non-homogeneous sample. Better to have a thin section, or at least a polished section, and employ EDS in an SEM to get more reliable results, preferably with a detector that that can at least "see" down to C. Most handheld units are useful in the field ...

Yes, when we do an analysis for a private customer, they own the data that they paid for, not me' when I work on my own material, it finds its way into a Mineral News article if it is significant. Otherwise, it goes nowhere, deemed as useless information, like the multitude of "Meteorwrongs", ...

A little "hoodoo", formed by selective erosion (via wind, ice). 

  Perhaps vivianite - common in the marls of southern NJ, occasionally filling fossil cavities, too.

Just sent a 16 inch itacolumite to Mark, along with the Mineral News article (Vol. 38, No. 4) by the late Bob Werner. The specimens are getting rather difficult to obtain these days!

Likely meta-autunite, and it will still fluoresce rather brightly under LW UV; no need to delay for a SW unit in this instance.. 

Looks like Brazilian heat-treated amethyst which is often sold as "Citrine". Regardless, it is all quartz.

The chalcanthites from the Planet Mine were offered in Tucson in 1996 - yes, I bought a flat!

The common needle-like zeolites (scolecite, mesolite, natrolite) can be relatively easily distinguished by careful EDS, and much cheaper than XRD. 

The American Museum of Natural History in New York attempted a viewable micromount display as part of a donation made by the family of mineral dealer Howard Belsky about 30+/- years ago after his untimely death.  The display failed repeatedly due to rough handling by visitors, and after many ...

Yup! I "collected" there several times under the smoke and watchful eye of Dr. Sainfeld many years ago. My dear wife even spent a day there, sitting on a bench reading a book ON OUR HONEYMOON some 33+ years ago, while I rummaged. It was a GREAT collecting trip for me, not so much for my wife....

The best way to avoid saw marks is to use a very slow power feed on the diamond saw. We prep many specimens and a slow speed (say 20 inches per hour) with a dressed diamond blade (we use 18") will provide a very smooth cut without saw marks - all assuming what you are cutting is relatively hard ...

A short obit appears in the current issue of Mineral News. Shawn was a regular contributor with great attention to detail, and also a staunch defender of mining in general. Very sad news, indeed.

We rely on the IMA as a definitive source of valid mineral names (of the two you mention, only jeremejevite is a valid.) While the late Pavel Vladimirovich Eremeev might have been upset by the transliteration of the mineral named for him that is in common use today, the mineral name is just that: a ...

I agree with Ed. Mineral names as stand alone titles or at beginning of sentences should be capitalized, otherwise not. Why take on cosmetic workload unnecessarily?

A good place to start (for comparison) is Forrest Cureton's pronunciations compiled on webmineral.com.  Forrest was guided by several mineralogists (Bideaux, Kampf etc.) on a number of more difficult names, and there are probably a couple thousand pronunciations there. Still in the ...

As editor of Mineral News, I let "nouvelle" stand in the title, as it conveyed (to me) both "new" and "novel" because of the very unusual locality on the island of Moorea in French Polynesia:  a new aragonite occurrence  from a novel locality. And yes, I do exercise a "light hand" ...

Just a reminder:, the NY State Museum is actively looking for a new curator. See the Mindat article about Marian Lupulesecu for details. Deadline for applicants is October 3!

As suggested earlier, post your two items to a general Discussion page (you have to be registered and logged in to do so), and an authorized site managers will assist. You will have to give them the specific localities for both your items, but we generally do not remove coordinates. We can, ...

I already sent them a note. When AI can determine chemistry and structure from a mineral image, they may have something. Otherwise, there are barriers, imposed by nature's  limit of well-crystallized specimens. And even then.....