Charoite, a chance discovery on the Murunskii Massif
Last Updated: 27th Apr 2023By David Carter
In the post war years after the Second World War, Russia was in the process of rebuilding its economy and the nation still had many difficulties. Life was hard, not least for geologists who were sent to explore remote areas searching for valuable mineral resources. Exploration and research in the Aldan Shield is still pretty infrequent today, usually determined by the remote and inhospitable environment, with access extremely limited for those reasons. Nonetheless, exploration does take place because the area has incredible wealth potential from its rich mineral resources and also for purely scientific purposes.
Vladimir Georgievich Ditmar was a Russian scientist born on 23rd July 1903 in Stary Oskol, Belgorod Oblast, Russia. He died on 27th March 1967 in Blagoveshchensk, Amur Oblast, Russia. During his career he carried out geological fieldwork in the remote Aldan Shield geological region in Yakutia, officially known as the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The region is an exposed basement of the Siberian Craton which is an old and stable part of the continental lithosphere, which consists of the Earth's two topmost layers, the crust and the uppermost mantle.
Ditmar spent his time exploring step-by-step the uninhabited taiga and mountainous expanses in the harsh Siberian conditions of the far north. He spent three years from 1956 surveying and studying the the Murunskii Massif, which is an alkaline complex located on the ternary boundary of Irkutskaya Oblast, the Sakha Republic and Chita Oblast (today part of Zabaykalsky Krai), at the confluence and in the drainage divide of the Chara and Tokko rivers, in the westernmost part of the Aldan Shield. Ditmar lived there in a little squat hut constructed to protect him from the elements whilst he carried out lengthy research at the remote locality with a small detachment of fellow geologists from Leningrad. He found numerous minerals and rocks, noting as much data and information as possible with the equipment at his disposal, but the site was fairly basic and Ditmar did not have access to analytical facilities there. He had noticed the unusual colour of some stones in the bed of one stream, which he called the Ditmar stream. He collected specimens and set them aside where he was living. As he was unable to research them in more detail he just called the material “cummingtonite schist”. The few local inhabitants in the area were clearly aware of the stone, but because the weathered surface of charoite is not attractive it usually looks just like other common rock. The Ditmar geology detachment were subsequently recalled in 1959 when a different geological study was despatched to the area.
Geologist Yuri Gavrilovich Rogov was born on 25th November 1935 in Yakutsk, the capital city of Sakha, located about 450 km (280 mi) south of the Arctic Circle. He graduated from the Irkutsk Mining and Metallurgical Institute in 1957 and from then until his retirement in 1994 he worked at the Sosnovgeologiya state enterprise. He specialised in the field of exploration of uranium deposits. During his time with Sosnov he was senior collector (1957-1960), head of the Murun site, senior geologist in search of party No. 324 (1960-1965), chief geologist of hydraulic fracturing No. 32 (1966-1986), chief geologist of Sosnov (1986-1992), chief ecologist at Sosnov (1992-1994). For his participation in searching for uranium and for the discovery of uranium deposits, he was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1970. He died on 5th June 2009 in Irkutsk (the chief city of Siberia, situated on the western shore of Lake Baikal in eastern Russia).
In 1960, as head geologist, Rogov with a team of scientists and technicians returned to the remote Ditmar camp. The stream and glen at the location had been marked by Ditmar on geological maps as “Ditmarovsky” and the locations of lumps of weathered lilac rock were also marked on those maps. The youthful team of geologists, in larger numbers than the previous expedition, worked long hours as they explored the area, but they were keen with a thirst for discovery. A village was built with an airfield in the nearby forest and they organised the construction of a mineralogical laboratory and also a rock grinding workshop to process the complex material they were finding. The new “village” was named Kedrov.
Later that same year Rogov, along with a fellow geologist and technician Volodya Nikitich, brought samples of lilac rocks they had found near Ditmar’s old shack to their on-site mineralogical lab. Within this lilac mass, along with dark green aegirine, they saw elongated prismatic crystals of an unidentified honey-yellow mineral. He handed them to one of the mineralogists in the team, Vera Parfentievna Rogova, who also happened to be his first wife (he subsequently got remarried in 1973 to geotechnical technician, Valentina Aleksandrovna). Along with her lab assistant Katya (Ekaterina Stepanovna Fedorova), Vera examined the specimen and suspected that it was a previously undiscovered mineral. She was correct in her supposition because the mineral was subsequently analysed and officially recognised as a new mineral. Named tinaksite in 1965, the name is derived from its composition: titanium (Ti), sodium (Na) potassium (K) and silicon (Si).
However, the rock samples did also seem to have another distinctive feature contained within the body of the specimens which was rather attractive. It was the lilac colour, a comparatively rare hue in mineralogy. The geologists perhaps did not initially believe that such a pleasing feature could be something new and it was disregarded whilst they continued with more demanding and engaging work around the Aldan Shield. Several important discoveries were made by the geologists as a result of their ongoing exploration and further research. Nearby they found rich ores of uranium and other valuable materials. Mineralogists in the team also discovered other new minerals.
Overall, the whole of the Murunskii Massif is itself a quite unique natural monument formed by very complex geological circumstances, the genesis of which to this day is still not entirely clear or understood. What is known is that there is a contact of syenite and limestone deposits and the unusually high content of calcium, as well as barium, strontium, zirconium and other elements, led to some extreme mineralogical diversity. The Aldan Shield produces numerous distinctive minerals and rocks (such as charoite, tinaksite, arkansite, frankamenite, murunskite, tausonite, tokkoite, yuksporite, etc.), many of them rare and unique to that particular area. The remote location is like a paradise for collectors of minerals and gems!
It was some years after the expedition and discovery of tinaksite, 1973 in fact, that gemmologists first realised the potential of the lilac coloured stones that had previously been recovered by geologists from those early Aldan Shield explorations. When cut and polished the material displayed an oily to pearly lustre and it presented wonderful, often swirling and dappled, feather-like, violet to lavender patterns. This led to further investigation and analysis, and ultimately another newly discovered mineral.
Vera Parfentievna was born on 14th March 1934 in Slyudyanka, located at the southern tip of Lake Baikal, 126 km (78 mi) south of Irkutsk. She married Yuri Rogov (date unknown), but they were divorced on 19th October 1973. In addition to identifying and describing both tinaksite and charoite, she described bauranoite, calciouranoite, and metacalciouranoite. In 1973, Vera headed the mineralogical and geochemical services at Sosnovgeologiya state enterprise where a school for experimental mineralogical and petrographic research was established. In the 1980s she developed the principle of mineralogical zoning using classified units of ore-metasomatic formations. She developed and implemented (1973 to 1990) methods of multi-scale mineralogical and geochemical mapping using instrumental methods for the selection of mineralogical and petrographic analysis in relation to TMA (thermomechanical analysis). She supervised the process of mineralogical and geochemical mapping to assess the ore content of northeastern Russia, Mongolia, the eastern Transbaikal polygon and rift depressions of Transbaikal, and the gold-bearing ore fields in eastern Siberia and Transbaikal. She singled out an assessment of the ore content of metasomatites and proposed methods for predicting and evaluating the ore content of areas based on metasomatic zoning. She is the author of 80 scientific publications and received an award of excellence in 1961 for subsoil exploration.
Vera Parfentievna Rogova discussed for a long time in the laboratory with her workmates what best to call the new lilac mineral. Dozens of various geographical names, the nearest mountains, rivers, lakes were offered. One of these being the Chara River. Coincidentally the word “chary” in Russian means enchantment which Vera thought apt as an expression for the enchanting lilac stone. Vera consulted with her team of mineralogists and everyone liked the name “charaite”. The only doubt she had was that the Chara River is some 43 miles away from the actual place of discovery. However, she came to the conclusion that minerals are often named for the initial place they were first discovered, yet they may also then be subsequently found in far away places elsewhere or even in different countries.
When publishing an article subsequently about the discovery of tinaksite, it was necessary for Vera to indicate which minerals accompanied it. Since the composition of the lilac material is close to canasite and is a related mineral, it was initially referred to as that so as not to delay the publication of the tinaksite article. Therefore, the first products made of the lilac stone in 1973 were actually traded as “canasite” items and they attracted much attention on the international market.
Vera had particular concerns about “canasite” lilac stone vases made from the new material that were being sold to foreigners. She was fearful that a mineralogist from abroad might analyse one and go on to name the mineral first so, at the next congress of the All-Union Mineralogical Society which was held in Leningrad, she talked with the chairman of the Soviet Commission on New Minerals. He duly sent a priority application in 1974 to the international chairman of the Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names (CNMMN) in Tokyo about the discovery of a new mineral - “charaite”. It was agreed that the mineral was obviously new and there were no comments about the naming of the mineral, save for a recommendation that the second letter “a” be replaced with a letter “o”, since the name “charaite” in English is consonant with the name of another mineral - cheralite. Vera agreed to the change and thus, the mineral began to be called charoite. Subsequently, this name led to the fact that in many foreign reference books it was erroneously stated that charoite was found on the Charo River.
Vera prepared a description of the mineral in order to submit it for final approval to the Soviet and international commissions. However, at the same time the CNMMN sent for consideration to the respective commissions of all countries, including the Soviet Union, details regarding a new mineral called morelandite, “discovered” by American mineralogist Pete J. Dunn. It was reported that this mineral was from Yakutia (Sakha Republic) and that the chemical composition of it was fully consistent with charoite. The chairman of the Soviet Commission on New Minerals wrote a protest letter to the chairman of the international commission explaining that this mineral had been found in the Soviet Union a long time ago, also it had been described more fully, plus a priority application had been sent to the international Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names a year ago. In response, the chairman of the international commission admitted there had been an error processing the priority application previously submitted by Russia for charoite and he appealed to the commission not to consider morelandite as a new mineral, but to vote for charoite instead. All member countries of the international CNMMN, except one, subsequently voted in favour of charoite.
The final approval of the mineral and its new name, charoite, took place on 22nd June 1977 (although it wasn’t until 1978 that it was officially confirmed as being a new mineral). However, the results of the vote did immediately became known to Dunn and, on 24th June 1977, he sent congratulations to Vera on the discovery of a new mineral and sent data on the composition of the mineral material he had so she could compare it with hers. He also mentioned that he had wanted to use the name morelandite in honour of one of his colleagues, Grover C. Moreland, at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, United States.
The guidelines of the International Mineralogical Association (IMA), who oversee the CNMMN, clearly state: “If a mineral is to be named after a living person, that person’s permission must be obtained by the author, and this should be done prior to the submission of the proposal to the CNMMN”. The IMA also add that, “when deciding to name a mineral after a person, it is well to recall J. D. Dana’s (1854) precept: ‘It should be remembered that the use of names of persons eminent in other sciences, or of such as are ignorant of all science, is wholly at variance with good usage and propriety; moreover, an attempted flattery of the politically distinguished is degrading to science, and cannot be too strongly discountenanced.’”
It is evident that Dunn did not discover charoite and it is also likely that he hadn’t obtained permission from Moreland to use his name prior to the submission he made to the CNMMN either. Dunn almost found himself in a very awkward and embarrassing position, but he managed to save some face by later naming another new mineral morelandite instead. The barium analogue of mimetite was approved in 1978 and is called morelandite.
It should be mentioned that each of the five minerals that Vera P. Rogova would describe in her career were found in extremely remote areas of eastern Russia (specifically at Murunskii Massif and the Oktyabr'skoe Mo-U Deposit) where she was an on-site mineralogist for Russian geological exploration teams searching for uranium deposits at these locations. The minerals were all approved by the IMA between 1965 and 1977.
Whereas, Pete J. Dunn was an American geologist and mineralogist who joined the Smithsonian Institution in the United States as a mineralogist in 1972, a position he would hold for the rest of his career until he retired in 2008. He was regarded as a “museum specialist”. Although the Franklin-Sterling Hill area of New Jersey, United States was the main focus of his professional interests, he delighted in discovering mineral species new to science and during his career described more than 130 of them! Beginning in 1975, they were mostly from the United States and the Americas, but also included others from Europe and Africa (mainly Namibia).
In Russia, charoite is referred to as cиреневый kамень (“sirenevyi kamen”), meaning lilac stone. To this day, it has not been found anywhere else in the world. The type material is conserved at the University of Rome in Italy & Fersman Mineralogical Museum, Moscow, Russia.
Link to the charoite mineral page on Mindat: Charoite
Charoitite is the name for the charoite-dominated potassic metasomatic-rock uniquely found in the Sakha Republic.
Charoite occurs within a syenite massif at the location in rocks, which are formed at alternatively 400°C (Rogova, 1978) or 200-250°C (Biryukov and Berdnikov, 1992), that are enriched with potassium at the contact with limestone in the massif. It is found where the syenite has intruded into and altered limestone deposits.
The main chemical components of chariote-bearing rocks are potassium (K), sodium (Na), calcium (Ca), silicon (Si) and water (H2O). The secondary components are barium (Ba), strontium (Sr), manganese (Mn), and titanium (Ti). The presence of iron (Fe), magnesium (Mg), aluminium (Al), rubidium (Rb), thorium (Th), tantalum (Ta), cerium (Ce), zirconium (Zr), etc. are noted in trace amounts.
The paragenesis of such rocks (charoite, canasite, tinaksite, frankamenite, miserite, etc.) explains the fact that so called “pure” charoite doesn’t actually occur in nature. Close accretion and intergrowth of phenocryst minerals (aegirine, tinaksite, microcline, quartz, arfvedsonite, apophyllite, frankamenite, etc.) is observed in specimens, therefore charoite has a very complex chemical composition. The IMA chemical formula for charoite is: (K,Sr,Ba,Mn)15-16(Ca,Na)32[Si70(O,OH)180](OH,F)4 · nH2O
Charoitite is a durable and reasonably hardy stone that is capable of being sculpted and heavily polished so it therefore has several potentially profitable applications for jewellery, decorative and ornamental use. However, extracting charoitite rocks is hard work and the source is situated nearly a mile above sea level and located over 600 miles from any proper roads. It is near impossible to transport heavy machinery to the far away location and using explosives isn’t really practical because it would damage the mining area, so the stone is extracted carefully and quite slowly by other methods, much of it by hand. Whilst there are estimated stocks amounting to many thousands of tons of charoitite in the area, the Sakha Republic has put a limit on the amount that can be mined at just 100 tons per year, in the hope that this not only ensures a long production life for the mine, but also keeps the demand strong and value high. However, that has seemingly increased the possibility for “fake” charoite finished items made from low-grade polished purple Chinese fluorite to enter the marketplace too!
Miscellaneous information
As an interesting aside, travelling outside the Soviet Union was almost impossible for Yuri Rogov because he specialised in the extraction of uranium reserves. However, in the mid-1970s he was granted permission to go abroad on a business trip to France and also to communicate with his French counterparts at the Gallery of Mineralogy and Geology in Paris. The collection there is considered to be the most complete in the world and he was proudly informed by the museum that this was indeed the case. The Russian geologist showed them a purple slab of charoite and asked them if they could identify the mineral. It did not come as much of a surprise that no one could and apparently the museum even offered to buy the stone from him, but Rogov politely declined.
In 1975, at the 9th Moscow International Film Festival, awards for the winners of the main competitions were made of charoite.
After charoite was formally recognised as a new mineral in 1977, a casket made of the stone was presented to General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev who the same year had forced the retirement of Nikolai Podgorny to once once again become Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and also make the position equivalent to that of an executive president.
For her contribution to the discovery of charoite, Vera Rogova received a prize in 1977 of 200 rubles, roughly equivalent to £20 (or $25 USD) at the time! Many years later she said of this, “The time was different then. We dreamed of leaving home as far as possible and doing as much as possible for the country. After the final exams at our institute, the queue stood for distribution - to Magadan!”
In 1979, scientists from countries of the Pacific basin came to the 14th Pacific Science Congress at Khabarovsk, located 30 kilometers (19 mi) from the China-Russia border. They were reportedly in awe of the stone splendour in the lobby of the hotel complex where the opening of the conference took place. It featured a panorama of the Ussuri taiga comprised of stones that were found in the regions along which the Baikal-Amur Mainline railway ran. There were more than forty varieties of rock, including charoite.
Rogova. V. P, Rogov. Y. G, Drits. V. A, Kuznetsova. N. N (1978) “Charoite, a new mineral, and a new jewelry stone”. Zapiski Vsesoyuznogo Mineralogicheskogo Obshchestva (Notes of the All-Union Mineralogical Society), vol. 107, iss. 1, pp. 94-100
https://rruff.info/rruff_1.0/uploads/ZVMO107N1_94.pdf
Rogova. V. P (1979) “Charoite, a new mineral and a new jewelry stone”. International Geology Review, vol. 21, pp. 615-620
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00206818209467101?journalCode=tigr20
Solyanik. V. A (2004) “Charoite - the discovery of the second half of the 20th century”. Bulletin of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, no. 4, pp. 152-156
https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/charoit-otkrytie-vtoroy-poloviny-xx-v/pdf
Belov. S. V, Frolov. A. A (2004) “Enchanting charoite”. Nature: journal, no. 9, pp. 36-39
http://vivovoco.astronet.ru/VV/JOURNAL/NATURE/09_04/CHAROIT.HTM
Rozhdestvenskaya. I, Kogure. T, Abe. E, Drits. V (Oct 2009) “A structural model for charoite”. Mineralogical Magazine, vol. 73(5), pp. 883-890
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249852122_A_structural_model_for_charoite
Rozhdestvenskaya. I, Mugnaioli. E, Czank. M, Depmeier. W, Kolb. U, Reinholdt. A, Weirich. T (Feb 2010) “The structure of charoite solved by conventional and automated electron diffraction”. Mineralogical Magazine, vol. 74(1), pp. 159-177
https://rruff-2.geo.arizona.edu/uploads/MM74_159.pdf
Wang. Y, He. H, Ivanov. A. V, Zhu. R, Lo. C (2014) “Age and origin of charoitite, Malyy Murun massif, Siberia, Russia”. International Geology Review, vol. 56, iss. 8, pp. 1007-1019
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00206814.2014.914860
GeoWiki - All about geology “Lilac stone deposit”
https://wiki.web.ru/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D0%A1%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%8C
Vlasov. K (Oct 2019) "Charoite from Lilac Stone". Mineralogy on Elements
https://elementy.ru/kartinka_dnya/1005/Charoit_iz_Sirenevogo_Kamnya
Юрий Рогов: биография, творчество, карьера, личная жизнь (Yuri Rogov: biography, creativity, career, personal life) Jan 2020
https://www.kakprosto.ru/kak-980509-yuriy-rogov-biografiya-tvorchestvo-karera-lichnaya-zhizn
Вера Рогова: История открытия чароита и других минералов - Сиреневый Камень месторождение чароита - Сиреневое чудо Сибири (Vera Rogova: The history of the discovery of charoite and other minerals - Lilac Stone deposit of charoite - Lilac miracle of Siberia) Nov 2010
http://petrographica.ru/detail/article/57.html
Mid-20th century photograph of a Russian geological fieldwork camp in the remote Aldan Shield region
Vladimir Georgievich Ditmar was a Russian scientist born on 23rd July 1903 in Stary Oskol, Belgorod Oblast, Russia. He died on 27th March 1967 in Blagoveshchensk, Amur Oblast, Russia. During his career he carried out geological fieldwork in the remote Aldan Shield geological region in Yakutia, officially known as the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The region is an exposed basement of the Siberian Craton which is an old and stable part of the continental lithosphere, which consists of the Earth's two topmost layers, the crust and the uppermost mantle.
Vladimir Georgievich Ditmar (1930s)
Ditmar spent his time exploring step-by-step the uninhabited taiga and mountainous expanses in the harsh Siberian conditions of the far north. He spent three years from 1956 surveying and studying the the Murunskii Massif, which is an alkaline complex located on the ternary boundary of Irkutskaya Oblast, the Sakha Republic and Chita Oblast (today part of Zabaykalsky Krai), at the confluence and in the drainage divide of the Chara and Tokko rivers, in the westernmost part of the Aldan Shield. Ditmar lived there in a little squat hut constructed to protect him from the elements whilst he carried out lengthy research at the remote locality with a small detachment of fellow geologists from Leningrad. He found numerous minerals and rocks, noting as much data and information as possible with the equipment at his disposal, but the site was fairly basic and Ditmar did not have access to analytical facilities there. He had noticed the unusual colour of some stones in the bed of one stream, which he called the Ditmar stream. He collected specimens and set them aside where he was living. As he was unable to research them in more detail he just called the material “cummingtonite schist”. The few local inhabitants in the area were clearly aware of the stone, but because the weathered surface of charoite is not attractive it usually looks just like other common rock. The Ditmar geology detachment were subsequently recalled in 1959 when a different geological study was despatched to the area.
The vast uninhabited taiga on the Aldan Shield in remote Siberia
Murunskii Massif general locality within Russia
Typically rough terrain on the heights of Olyokma-Chara Plateau (the Murunskii Massif is a constituent)
Geologist Yuri Gavrilovich Rogov was born on 25th November 1935 in Yakutsk, the capital city of Sakha, located about 450 km (280 mi) south of the Arctic Circle. He graduated from the Irkutsk Mining and Metallurgical Institute in 1957 and from then until his retirement in 1994 he worked at the Sosnovgeologiya state enterprise. He specialised in the field of exploration of uranium deposits. During his time with Sosnov he was senior collector (1957-1960), head of the Murun site, senior geologist in search of party No. 324 (1960-1965), chief geologist of hydraulic fracturing No. 32 (1966-1986), chief geologist of Sosnov (1986-1992), chief ecologist at Sosnov (1992-1994). For his participation in searching for uranium and for the discovery of uranium deposits, he was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1970. He died on 5th June 2009 in Irkutsk (the chief city of Siberia, situated on the western shore of Lake Baikal in eastern Russia).
Yuri Gavrilovich Rogov (photograph date unknown)
According to those that knew him he did not build his life according to ordinary standards and there was often the “smack of salty sweat and the bitterness of a forest fire” in his work!
In 1960, as head geologist, Rogov with a team of scientists and technicians returned to the remote Ditmar camp. The stream and glen at the location had been marked by Ditmar on geological maps as “Ditmarovsky” and the locations of lumps of weathered lilac rock were also marked on those maps. The youthful team of geologists, in larger numbers than the previous expedition, worked long hours as they explored the area, but they were keen with a thirst for discovery. A village was built with an airfield in the nearby forest and they organised the construction of a mineralogical laboratory and also a rock grinding workshop to process the complex material they were finding. The new “village” was named Kedrov.
Later that same year Rogov, along with a fellow geologist and technician Volodya Nikitich, brought samples of lilac rocks they had found near Ditmar’s old shack to their on-site mineralogical lab. Within this lilac mass, along with dark green aegirine, they saw elongated prismatic crystals of an unidentified honey-yellow mineral. He handed them to one of the mineralogists in the team, Vera Parfentievna Rogova, who also happened to be his first wife (he subsequently got remarried in 1973 to geotechnical technician, Valentina Aleksandrovna). Along with her lab assistant Katya (Ekaterina Stepanovna Fedorova), Vera examined the specimen and suspected that it was a previously undiscovered mineral. She was correct in her supposition because the mineral was subsequently analysed and officially recognised as a new mineral. Named tinaksite in 1965, the name is derived from its composition: titanium (Ti), sodium (Na) potassium (K) and silicon (Si).
However, the rock samples did also seem to have another distinctive feature contained within the body of the specimens which was rather attractive. It was the lilac colour, a comparatively rare hue in mineralogy. The geologists perhaps did not initially believe that such a pleasing feature could be something new and it was disregarded whilst they continued with more demanding and engaging work around the Aldan Shield. Several important discoveries were made by the geologists as a result of their ongoing exploration and further research. Nearby they found rich ores of uranium and other valuable materials. Mineralogists in the team also discovered other new minerals.
Overall, the whole of the Murunskii Massif is itself a quite unique natural monument formed by very complex geological circumstances, the genesis of which to this day is still not entirely clear or understood. What is known is that there is a contact of syenite and limestone deposits and the unusually high content of calcium, as well as barium, strontium, zirconium and other elements, led to some extreme mineralogical diversity. The Aldan Shield produces numerous distinctive minerals and rocks (such as charoite, tinaksite, arkansite, frankamenite, murunskite, tausonite, tokkoite, yuksporite, etc.), many of them rare and unique to that particular area. The remote location is like a paradise for collectors of minerals and gems!
It was some years after the expedition and discovery of tinaksite, 1973 in fact, that gemmologists first realised the potential of the lilac coloured stones that had previously been recovered by geologists from those early Aldan Shield explorations. When cut and polished the material displayed an oily to pearly lustre and it presented wonderful, often swirling and dappled, feather-like, violet to lavender patterns. This led to further investigation and analysis, and ultimately another newly discovered mineral.
Yuri Gavrilovich Rogov & Vera Parfentievna, later Rogova when she married Yuri
Vera Parfentievna Rogova (left) with mineralogist brother Herman and unknown female at the microscope
Vera Parfentievna was born on 14th March 1934 in Slyudyanka, located at the southern tip of Lake Baikal, 126 km (78 mi) south of Irkutsk. She married Yuri Rogov (date unknown), but they were divorced on 19th October 1973. In addition to identifying and describing both tinaksite and charoite, she described bauranoite, calciouranoite, and metacalciouranoite. In 1973, Vera headed the mineralogical and geochemical services at Sosnovgeologiya state enterprise where a school for experimental mineralogical and petrographic research was established. In the 1980s she developed the principle of mineralogical zoning using classified units of ore-metasomatic formations. She developed and implemented (1973 to 1990) methods of multi-scale mineralogical and geochemical mapping using instrumental methods for the selection of mineralogical and petrographic analysis in relation to TMA (thermomechanical analysis). She supervised the process of mineralogical and geochemical mapping to assess the ore content of northeastern Russia, Mongolia, the eastern Transbaikal polygon and rift depressions of Transbaikal, and the gold-bearing ore fields in eastern Siberia and Transbaikal. She singled out an assessment of the ore content of metasomatites and proposed methods for predicting and evaluating the ore content of areas based on metasomatic zoning. She is the author of 80 scientific publications and received an award of excellence in 1961 for subsoil exploration.
Honoured Geologist of Russia, Doctor of Geology and Mineralogy Vera Parfentievna Rogova in later years
Vera Parfentievna Rogova discussed for a long time in the laboratory with her workmates what best to call the new lilac mineral. Dozens of various geographical names, the nearest mountains, rivers, lakes were offered. One of these being the Chara River. Coincidentally the word “chary” in Russian means enchantment which Vera thought apt as an expression for the enchanting lilac stone. Vera consulted with her team of mineralogists and everyone liked the name “charaite”. The only doubt she had was that the Chara River is some 43 miles away from the actual place of discovery. However, she came to the conclusion that minerals are often named for the initial place they were first discovered, yet they may also then be subsequently found in far away places elsewhere or even in different countries.
When publishing an article subsequently about the discovery of tinaksite, it was necessary for Vera to indicate which minerals accompanied it. Since the composition of the lilac material is close to canasite and is a related mineral, it was initially referred to as that so as not to delay the publication of the tinaksite article. Therefore, the first products made of the lilac stone in 1973 were actually traded as “canasite” items and they attracted much attention on the international market.
Vera had particular concerns about “canasite” lilac stone vases made from the new material that were being sold to foreigners. She was fearful that a mineralogist from abroad might analyse one and go on to name the mineral first so, at the next congress of the All-Union Mineralogical Society which was held in Leningrad, she talked with the chairman of the Soviet Commission on New Minerals. He duly sent a priority application in 1974 to the international chairman of the Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names (CNMMN) in Tokyo about the discovery of a new mineral - “charaite”. It was agreed that the mineral was obviously new and there were no comments about the naming of the mineral, save for a recommendation that the second letter “a” be replaced with a letter “o”, since the name “charaite” in English is consonant with the name of another mineral - cheralite. Vera agreed to the change and thus, the mineral began to be called charoite. Subsequently, this name led to the fact that in many foreign reference books it was erroneously stated that charoite was found on the Charo River.
Vera prepared a description of the mineral in order to submit it for final approval to the Soviet and international commissions. However, at the same time the CNMMN sent for consideration to the respective commissions of all countries, including the Soviet Union, details regarding a new mineral called morelandite, “discovered” by American mineralogist Pete J. Dunn. It was reported that this mineral was from Yakutia (Sakha Republic) and that the chemical composition of it was fully consistent with charoite. The chairman of the Soviet Commission on New Minerals wrote a protest letter to the chairman of the international commission explaining that this mineral had been found in the Soviet Union a long time ago, also it had been described more fully, plus a priority application had been sent to the international Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names a year ago. In response, the chairman of the international commission admitted there had been an error processing the priority application previously submitted by Russia for charoite and he appealed to the commission not to consider morelandite as a new mineral, but to vote for charoite instead. All member countries of the international CNMMN, except one, subsequently voted in favour of charoite.
The final approval of the mineral and its new name, charoite, took place on 22nd June 1977 (although it wasn’t until 1978 that it was officially confirmed as being a new mineral). However, the results of the vote did immediately became known to Dunn and, on 24th June 1977, he sent congratulations to Vera on the discovery of a new mineral and sent data on the composition of the mineral material he had so she could compare it with hers. He also mentioned that he had wanted to use the name morelandite in honour of one of his colleagues, Grover C. Moreland, at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, United States.
The guidelines of the International Mineralogical Association (IMA), who oversee the CNMMN, clearly state: “If a mineral is to be named after a living person, that person’s permission must be obtained by the author, and this should be done prior to the submission of the proposal to the CNMMN”. The IMA also add that, “when deciding to name a mineral after a person, it is well to recall J. D. Dana’s (1854) precept: ‘It should be remembered that the use of names of persons eminent in other sciences, or of such as are ignorant of all science, is wholly at variance with good usage and propriety; moreover, an attempted flattery of the politically distinguished is degrading to science, and cannot be too strongly discountenanced.’”
It is evident that Dunn did not discover charoite and it is also likely that he hadn’t obtained permission from Moreland to use his name prior to the submission he made to the CNMMN either. Dunn almost found himself in a very awkward and embarrassing position, but he managed to save some face by later naming another new mineral morelandite instead. The barium analogue of mimetite was approved in 1978 and is called morelandite.
It should be mentioned that each of the five minerals that Vera P. Rogova would describe in her career were found in extremely remote areas of eastern Russia (specifically at Murunskii Massif and the Oktyabr'skoe Mo-U Deposit) where she was an on-site mineralogist for Russian geological exploration teams searching for uranium deposits at these locations. The minerals were all approved by the IMA between 1965 and 1977.
Whereas, Pete J. Dunn was an American geologist and mineralogist who joined the Smithsonian Institution in the United States as a mineralogist in 1972, a position he would hold for the rest of his career until he retired in 2008. He was regarded as a “museum specialist”. Although the Franklin-Sterling Hill area of New Jersey, United States was the main focus of his professional interests, he delighted in discovering mineral species new to science and during his career described more than 130 of them! Beginning in 1975, they were mostly from the United States and the Americas, but also included others from Europe and Africa (mainly Namibia).
In Russia, charoite is referred to as cиреневый kамень (“sirenevyi kamen”), meaning lilac stone. To this day, it has not been found anywhere else in the world. The type material is conserved at the University of Rome in Italy & Fersman Mineralogical Museum, Moscow, Russia.
Link to the charoite mineral page on Mindat: Charoite
A swirling mass of lilac grey charoite and light brown tinaksite, with numerous small black needle-like fine crystals of aegirine randomly dispersed throughout rather than formed as sprays as usually seen
A sizeable fragment of natural swirling lilac grey charoite with black aegirine
Pale lilac charoite with divergent sprays of black aegirine and occurrences of light brown tinaksite
Charoite (lavender base material), aegirine (black acicular crystals) and tinaksite (light brown crystals)
Divergent sprays of greenish black aegirine crystals with yellowish tinaksite in violet charoite
Polished charoite ore in the Museum of Geology of the SB RAS (Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences), Yakutsk, Republic of Sakha, Russia. The large yellow crystals are most likely tinaksite.
Charoitite is the name for the charoite-dominated potassic metasomatic-rock uniquely found in the Sakha Republic.
Charoite occurs within a syenite massif at the location in rocks, which are formed at alternatively 400°C (Rogova, 1978) or 200-250°C (Biryukov and Berdnikov, 1992), that are enriched with potassium at the contact with limestone in the massif. It is found where the syenite has intruded into and altered limestone deposits.
The main chemical components of chariote-bearing rocks are potassium (K), sodium (Na), calcium (Ca), silicon (Si) and water (H2O). The secondary components are barium (Ba), strontium (Sr), manganese (Mn), and titanium (Ti). The presence of iron (Fe), magnesium (Mg), aluminium (Al), rubidium (Rb), thorium (Th), tantalum (Ta), cerium (Ce), zirconium (Zr), etc. are noted in trace amounts.
The paragenesis of such rocks (charoite, canasite, tinaksite, frankamenite, miserite, etc.) explains the fact that so called “pure” charoite doesn’t actually occur in nature. Close accretion and intergrowth of phenocryst minerals (aegirine, tinaksite, microcline, quartz, arfvedsonite, apophyllite, frankamenite, etc.) is observed in specimens, therefore charoite has a very complex chemical composition. The IMA chemical formula for charoite is: (K,Sr,Ba,Mn)15-16(Ca,Na)32[Si70(O,OH)180](OH,F)4 · nH2O
Charoitite is a durable and reasonably hardy stone that is capable of being sculpted and heavily polished so it therefore has several potentially profitable applications for jewellery, decorative and ornamental use. However, extracting charoitite rocks is hard work and the source is situated nearly a mile above sea level and located over 600 miles from any proper roads. It is near impossible to transport heavy machinery to the far away location and using explosives isn’t really practical because it would damage the mining area, so the stone is extracted carefully and quite slowly by other methods, much of it by hand. Whilst there are estimated stocks amounting to many thousands of tons of charoitite in the area, the Sakha Republic has put a limit on the amount that can be mined at just 100 tons per year, in the hope that this not only ensures a long production life for the mine, but also keeps the demand strong and value high. However, that has seemingly increased the possibility for “fake” charoite finished items made from low-grade polished purple Chinese fluorite to enter the marketplace too!
Charoitite rock in the charoite mining area on the Murunskii Massif
Miscellaneous information
As an interesting aside, travelling outside the Soviet Union was almost impossible for Yuri Rogov because he specialised in the extraction of uranium reserves. However, in the mid-1970s he was granted permission to go abroad on a business trip to France and also to communicate with his French counterparts at the Gallery of Mineralogy and Geology in Paris. The collection there is considered to be the most complete in the world and he was proudly informed by the museum that this was indeed the case. The Russian geologist showed them a purple slab of charoite and asked them if they could identify the mineral. It did not come as much of a surprise that no one could and apparently the museum even offered to buy the stone from him, but Rogov politely declined.
In 1975, at the 9th Moscow International Film Festival, awards for the winners of the main competitions were made of charoite.
After charoite was formally recognised as a new mineral in 1977, a casket made of the stone was presented to General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev who the same year had forced the retirement of Nikolai Podgorny to once once again become Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and also make the position equivalent to that of an executive president.
For her contribution to the discovery of charoite, Vera Rogova received a prize in 1977 of 200 rubles, roughly equivalent to £20 (or $25 USD) at the time! Many years later she said of this, “The time was different then. We dreamed of leaving home as far as possible and doing as much as possible for the country. After the final exams at our institute, the queue stood for distribution - to Magadan!”
In 1979, scientists from countries of the Pacific basin came to the 14th Pacific Science Congress at Khabarovsk, located 30 kilometers (19 mi) from the China-Russia border. They were reportedly in awe of the stone splendour in the lobby of the hotel complex where the opening of the conference took place. It featured a panorama of the Ussuri taiga comprised of stones that were found in the regions along which the Baikal-Amur Mainline railway ran. There were more than forty varieties of rock, including charoite.
Charoite postage stamp, issued 2000 in Russia
References:
Rogova. V. P, Rogov. Y. G, Drits. V. A, Kuznetsova. N. N (1978) “Charoite, a new mineral, and a new jewelry stone”. Zapiski Vsesoyuznogo Mineralogicheskogo Obshchestva (Notes of the All-Union Mineralogical Society), vol. 107, iss. 1, pp. 94-100
https://rruff.info/rruff_1.0/uploads/ZVMO107N1_94.pdf
Rogova. V. P (1979) “Charoite, a new mineral and a new jewelry stone”. International Geology Review, vol. 21, pp. 615-620
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00206818209467101?journalCode=tigr20
Solyanik. V. A (2004) “Charoite - the discovery of the second half of the 20th century”. Bulletin of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, no. 4, pp. 152-156
https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/charoit-otkrytie-vtoroy-poloviny-xx-v/pdf
Belov. S. V, Frolov. A. A (2004) “Enchanting charoite”. Nature: journal, no. 9, pp. 36-39
http://vivovoco.astronet.ru/VV/JOURNAL/NATURE/09_04/CHAROIT.HTM
Rozhdestvenskaya. I, Kogure. T, Abe. E, Drits. V (Oct 2009) “A structural model for charoite”. Mineralogical Magazine, vol. 73(5), pp. 883-890
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249852122_A_structural_model_for_charoite
Rozhdestvenskaya. I, Mugnaioli. E, Czank. M, Depmeier. W, Kolb. U, Reinholdt. A, Weirich. T (Feb 2010) “The structure of charoite solved by conventional and automated electron diffraction”. Mineralogical Magazine, vol. 74(1), pp. 159-177
https://rruff-2.geo.arizona.edu/uploads/MM74_159.pdf
Wang. Y, He. H, Ivanov. A. V, Zhu. R, Lo. C (2014) “Age and origin of charoitite, Malyy Murun massif, Siberia, Russia”. International Geology Review, vol. 56, iss. 8, pp. 1007-1019
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00206814.2014.914860
GeoWiki - All about geology “Lilac stone deposit”
https://wiki.web.ru/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D0%A1%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%8C
Vlasov. K (Oct 2019) "Charoite from Lilac Stone". Mineralogy on Elements
https://elementy.ru/kartinka_dnya/1005/Charoit_iz_Sirenevogo_Kamnya
Юрий Рогов: биография, творчество, карьера, личная жизнь (Yuri Rogov: biography, creativity, career, personal life) Jan 2020
https://www.kakprosto.ru/kak-980509-yuriy-rogov-biografiya-tvorchestvo-karera-lichnaya-zhizn
Вера Рогова: История открытия чароита и других минералов - Сиреневый Камень месторождение чароита - Сиреневое чудо Сибири (Vera Rogova: The history of the discovery of charoite and other minerals - Lilac Stone deposit of charoite - Lilac miracle of Siberia) Nov 2010
http://petrographica.ru/detail/article/57.html
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