WORMS, A BLOOD MOON, AND MERCURY

 

As I write this article on Thursday the 13^th of March, 2025, my mind keeps wandering to the celestial event of the month—the Worm Moon, a Full Moon. The name, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, is due to warming soil and the appearance of worm casts or even the appearance of earth worms. But hold on, up here in the Northland the temperature may be a tad too cool for earthworms in mid-March. Does 22 degrees F sound like earthworm nirvana? So, a couple of more appropriate names for the March moon is Crow Moon since Poe’s favorite bird is very busy cawing and telling the country that Spring is on the way. That certainly seems the case in our plethora of trees around here. In northern Wisconsin the native Ojibway refer to the March moon as Snow Crust Moon. Sounds good as 40 degrees during the day tends to melt snow while 22 degrees at night freezes it over and a crust forms.

 No earthworms on the 19th!!

But the big event is that this a Full Moon is also a Blood Moon, a total lunar eclipse—and it was a dandy. In this arrangement the moon, earth, and sun are lined up and the earth’s shadow begins to creep across the moon until the moon is completely covered, but is still visible. What happens is that the earth’s atmosphere scatters some sunlight across the lunar surface and at “totality” the moon appears a copper red or even a blood red. Really spooky but also a spectacular event.

Here in the Northland, sometime shortly after 11:00 CDT the earth’s shadow started to creep across the moon, slowing getting larger and larger until totality was reached about 1:30 AM. I observed the process until about 2:00 AM but totality lasted until about 2:30 AM when the earth’s shadow started to withdraw. The “neat” thing about the event is that we were in a short term, major  warming event in Wisconsin, so I was able plop myself on the porch rocking chair with only a light jacket and my binocs and experience this celestial event with a clear sky and quietness. Wow, and double wow, since Thursday the 20^th is the Spring Equinox.

The copper red moon rang a little bell in my head that reminded me of a Perky box containing the mercury mineral corderoite that needed examination. The red connection is not copper related but because many mercury minerals display some sort of a red color.

Although mercury has not been legally mined in the U.S. since 1992, at one time our country had a substantial number of operating mines. Most of these mines were in the far western US (see map) although in terms of production per mine the Terlingua fields in the Big Bend area of west Texas was substantial. I could not easily locate past production figures before 1992. In winding down the lack of mine production, much of  of the production in the early 1990s was from catching mercury as a byproduct in gold mining operations. The U.S. also imported mercury and recovered the metal from recycling efforts. Today the use of mercury in the US has greatly decreased due to its toxicity, environmental concerns, and human health conditions. As noted on the map, most mercury mines were located in California, Nevada, and Oregon. 

Mercury was mined in Nevada from about 1907 (discovered then at Antelope Springs and with mining beginning in 1914) until the early 1990’s. The District mines produced from veins in Triassic limestone, dolomite, conglomerate, and shale (Gray and others, 1969). Evidently these veins were emplaced during the Miocene because of extensional magmatism (Noble and others, 1988).  That is, Miocene extensional tectonics involved the stretching of the earth’s crust producing what we know today as the Basin and Range physiographic province.

Mercury mines in the U.S. None are active today.    Map courtesy of Land Matters, a non-profit 501c3 charitable educational organization found at www.mylandmatters.org.

One of the best-known mercury mining locations of later years was the Cordero--McDermitt Mines, Opalite District, Humbolt County, Nevada. The McDermitt (including the Cordero and other smaller mines) is just one of several mines that are located in the Opalite Mercury Mining District that straddles the Nevada-Oregon State Line,  The District is associated with a volcanic caldera complex where eruption centered around a Miocene age of ~16 Ma (Henry and others, 2016).  The original mercury mineralization was in the Cordero Rhyolite, but later hydrothermal action deposited the metal into nearby lake or stream-deposited tuff (volcanic ejecta) (Henry and others, 2016). Mercury in the caldera complex was first mined in the 1970s and the operations ceased in 1990. The McDermitt complex was the most important mercury producer in the Americas during the 20^th century producing 279,000 flasks to 1988 (geoconsultancy.com.au).  The minerals cinnabar, ~50%, (mercury sulfide HgS) and corderoite, ~50%, (mercury sulfide chloride Hg₃S₂Cl₂) yielded almost all the mercury. However, there are several other mercury minerals present in minor amounts.

Corderoite is another one of those mercury minerals that appeared “later in life” as Eugene Ford and others did not described it until 1974 from the Codero Mine. Of course, the Mine was very new at that point, but the mineral had not been noted at other mercury localities. In addition to corderoite, the Cordero Mine (McDermitt complex) is the Type Locality of these other mercury minerals: alexearlite, kenhsuite, mikecoxite, and radtkeite.

When many rockhounds think of a “standard” color for mercury minerals the bright cherry red of cinnabar probably comes to mind, at least it does for me. Cinnabar was the mineral we always studied in mineralogy courses and little did I know, until decades later, that less abundant (that we did not observe in class) mercury minerals are various shades of pink, orange, silvery-gray, brownish red, yellow, and even colorless. Interestingly, many of these mercury minerals begin to darken, some irreversible, when exposed to light sources as they are photosensitive. In the well-studied photosensitive cinnabar, the first reaction to light, moisture and chloride ions is the change to corderoite:

3HgS + 2Cl à Hg₃S₂Cl₂ + S

Corderoite is  also unstable when exposed to light and oxygen and will degrade to calomel:

Hg₃S₂Cl₂ + 2Cl à Hg + 2S + Hg₂Cl₂

And finally, calomel will degrade into mercuric chloride and metallic mercury (Keune and Boon, 2005; Radepont and others, 2011). These reactions probably seem rather insignificant to rockhounds except to note that most corderoite in the rock record is the result of the degradation of cinnabar. However, to art historians and art conservators the chemistry behind this darkening is extremely important. Vermilion, the red coloring made from cinnabar perhaps as far back as 8000 B.C., was the primary red pigment during the Renaissance Era until the 20^th Century. So, conservators were greatly concerned about beautiful red paints used by the masters (and others) in their majestic works of art darkening with age. Keune and Boon (2005) determined that chlorine salts in the atmosphere were the major culprits in darkening during the degradation of cinnabar into elemental mercury. Museums are now able to restrict moist air and chlorine from reaching the paintings and also to chose specific light frequencies for the gallery illumination (Wogan, 2013).

Cherry red cinnabar degrading to pink corderoite. Matrix is opalite with white quartz and glassy hyolite opal. Bottom width FOV ~ 7mm. Top width FOV ~ 4 mm.

Corderoite is an isometric mineral although individual cubic crystals are quite small, less than 2 mm, and quite rare. Most occurrences of the mineral is as tiny grains, druse-like, on degrading cinnabar. It usually is pink to pink red to orange pink color when fresh but as it also degrades in light and moisture to a gray and finally black color. Meanwhile it remains tough to identify except using the pink color and its relationship to the degrading cinnabar. As noted above, the McDermitt complex has produced corderoite (degrading cinnabar) from both the rhyolitic complex rocks and the original tuffaceous lake sediments which today have consolidated to “opalite” with angular fragments of rhyolite and tuff along with secondary amorphous silica and others. In other words, it usually is not a nice looking rockhound mineral but certainly was a critical mineral in the mining and production of mercury.

Want to know more about mercury? I would suggest the USGS Circular 1248, Geologic Studies of Mercury by the U.S. Geological Survey.

https://clu-in.org/download/contaminantfocus/mercury/geologic-studies-of-mercury-c-1248.pdf

REFERENCES CITED

 

Foord, E.E., Berendsen, P., and Storey, L.O. 1974, Corderoite, first natural occurrence of α-Hg3S2Cl2, from the Cordero mercury deposit, Humboldt County, Nevada. American Mineralogist, vol,.59, nos. 7-8.

Gray, J.E., M.G Adams, J.C. Crock, and P.M. Theodorakos, 1999, Geochemical Data for Environmental Studies of Mercury Mines in Nevada: U. S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 99-576.

 Henry, C.D., Castor, S.B., Starkel, W.A., Ellis, B.S., Wolff, J.A., Laravie, J.A., McIntosh, W.C., and Heizler, M.T., 2017, Geology and evolution of the McDermitt caldera, northern Nevada and southeastern Oregon, western USA: Geosphere, v. 13, no. 4.

Keune, K. and Boon, J.J., 2005. Analytical imaging studies clarifying the process of the darkening of vermilion in paintings. Analytical Chemistry, vol. 77. No. 15.

Noble, D.C., J.K. McCormack, E.H McKee, M.L. Silberman, and A.B. Wallace, A.B., 1988, Time of mineralization in the evolution of the McDermitt Caldera Complex, Nevada-Oregon, and the relation of Middle Miocene mineralization in the Northern Great Basin to coeval regional basaltic magmatic activity: Economic Geology, vol. 83.

Radepont, M., De Nolf, W., Janssens, K., Van Der Snickt, G., Coquinot, Y., Klaassen, L., and Cotte, M., 2011. The use of microscopic X-ray diffraction for the study of HgS and its degradation products corderoite (α-Hg3S2Cl2), kenhsuite (γ-Hg3S2Cl2) and calomel (Hg2Cl2) in historical paintings: Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry vol. 26, no. 5.

Wogen, T., 2013, Mercury’s dark influence on art: Chemistry World at: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/mercurys-dark-influence-on-art/6735.article.

SLEUTHING FOR FERRIERITE AND A SMILE ON MY FACE

 

I am continuing my project of sorting out minerals, mainly in Perky Boxes, that I have accumulated in the last few years. I am always a sucker for purchasing small collections of obscure minerals or from somewhat forgotten collecting localities. Recently I hit the jackpot on both accounts by dredging up a Box containing “ferrierite” with a collecting locality listed as Unspecified Ferrierite occurrence (1), North Side of Raymond Peak, Raymond Peak, Silver Mountain Mining District, Alpine County, California. Well, ferrierite is a rather uncommon zeolite, described in 1918, with a Type Locality on the north shore of Kamloops Lake, British Columbia. It took another 50 years until other occurrences of “ferrierite” started to show up in the professional record. It was not until 1976 that Wise and Tschernich determined “ferrierite’s” composition by analyzing nine samples, all from different locations. These determinations noted that either Mg, Na, and K can all dominate the cation composition: “ferrierite can crystallize from solutions with a wide variety of alkali and alkaline earth cations, none of which are non- essential to the zeolite.” This evidence led later researchers (Coombs and others, 1997) to specify that “ferrierite” is not a mineral but a Subgroup and part of the Zeolite Group. Ferrierite-Mg, with magnesium as the dominant cation, is the new name for the Type material from Kamloops Lake. Ferrierite-K is the potassium-dominant mineral although most specimens also contain significant amounts of sodium. Ferrierite-Na is a sodium-dominant mineral and is quite rare in the rock record. In 2021 ferrierite-NH₄ was recognized as an ammonium-dominant, new Subgroup mineral. Unlike the other Subgroup minerals that are associated with volcanic rocks, ferrierite-NH₄ was found in open coal pits in the Czech Republic. In reading these many scientific papers, starting with Wise and Tschernich and ending with the NH₄ papers, it became evident that visual recognition of ferrierite minerals is a difficult identification problem for an ole plugger like me.

And mow for the sleuthing. I was stumped with the composition of my specimen as it simply was identified, by the unnamed collector, as “ferrierite near Markleeville, Alpine County, California.” So, that tidbit at least gave me a start. The not so good news was that none of the named specimens of ferrierite noted in MinDat localities had any connections with Alpine County, California. By luck, probably, I clicked on Ferrierite Subgroup and it listed occurrences of all specimens of “ferrierite” and there it was: “Unspecified Ferrierite occurrence, Alpine County, Silver Mountain Mining District, etc.”  Unfortunately, there was not a specified mineral name listed; however, the location was hot linked and so off I go. That new web site did not tell me much but did indicate a specified location “SSW of Markleeville” and had a great photo of a collected specimen of a Ferrierite Subgroup mineral that really looked like my specimen.

 Knowing that fact took me back to the Wise 1976 American Mineralogist article to rescan for additional clues. What I found was that the Silver Mountain, California, specimen sampled by Wise noted that magnesium was by far the most common cation compared to sodium and potassium. Although I have some difficulty in understanding these chemical analysis charts, this result would seem to indicate that my specimen is Ferrierite-Mg. Still looking for a reference to back up my conclusion, I found Lauf’s 2014 book Collector’s Guide to the Zeolite Group and was happy to read “Other locales for the Mg-dominant material include:.. Silver Mountain, California.” For me, this moment was a time for relief and dinner (seeing it was 9:30 PM and I had turned down my invitation for a 5:30 sit down with my spouse and daughter).  But it was a time of intense satisfaction for my best learning often occurs when I feel like a bloodhound on the trail. I did not have the slightest idea that this rather insignificant mineral would lead me down so many dead ends. However, I could just feel something in my mind that told me to keep after it, dinner could come later!

I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma. Eartha Kitt.

As for the nitty gritty specifics, Ferrierite-Mg is a zeolite, and these minerals often confuse me (easy to do). They are usually defined as microporous aluminum silicates with unusual properties. Their framework is composed of linked tetrahedra consisting of four oxygen ions surrounding a cation. This arrangement leaves open pores and channels of fixed sizes, and these vacancies allow small molecules to pass through while sieving out larger molecules. One can’t really see these pores but structural analyses can be performed by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD).

Many zeolites are very siliceous looking with a vitreous luster, often beautiful crystals, and usually remind me of some other mineral! They can be quite confusing, at least to me. When I look at cavities in basalts or tuffaceous sedimentary rocks and see small siliceous crystals lining the vugs  I can call out “zeolite” but that is about it for identification. I am a little better with the large crystals found in Indian basalts, but generally speaking I would be better off sticking to Paleozoic brachiopods. 

Ferrierite radiating crystals. Top FOV ~4 mm. Bottom ~5 mm.

Ferrierite-Mg was the “type” ferrierite described in 1918 from Kamloops Lake, BC.  At this locality most of the crystals are orange to orange red in color. However, in other localities the Orthorhombic crystals are transparent to translucent, soft (-3.0 Mohs), colorless to white, vitreous laths. Most ferrierite-Mg crystals occur as radiating groups.

This has been an interesting exercise in following leads, meeting dead ends, retreating, and following new leads until a final determination is reached. And then, a sigh of satisfactory relief.  

The goal in life is to live young, have fun, and arrive at your final destination as late as possible, with a smile on your face. Jon Gordon

REFERENCES CITED

Coombs, Douglas S., and others, 1997, Recommended nomenclature for zeolite minerals; report of the Subcommittee on Zeolites of the International Mineralogical Association, Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names: The Canadian Mineralogist, vol. 35, no. 6.

Wise, William S., Tschernich, R. W. (1976) Chemical composition of ferrierite. American Mineralogist, vol. 61, nos. 1-2.

FEDERAL LANDS: COLLECTING FOSSILS

Everyone should believe in something. I believe I'll go fishing.  (Thoreau)

 

  

Xiphactinus (cast) collected from Cretaceous chalk beds of Kansas

Most rockhounds are interested in collecting fossils on Federal lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), part of the Department of Interior, and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), a member of the Department of Agriculture. In past years I have often offered comments on the proposed rules and regulations concerning such and had hoped that the two agencies would come up with  common, and understandable, regulations. That “sort of happened” although there are differences in the rules, and some appear to an ole plugger like me as not very understandable. However, both agencies strongly point out that collecting vertebrate fossils, “uncommon” invertebrate fossils and fossil plants on Federal lands is prohibited without a collecting permit---don’t even think about it and don’t disturb the area if you happen to find a locality—contact the land managers for advice.

As best that I can understand, the USFS has a very prescriptive set of regulations concerning the collection of common invertebrate fossils: invertebrate fossils are the fossilized remains of animals lacking a backbone. A few examples include: ammonites, trilobites, snails, clams, and insects. Invertebrate and plant fossils (including invertebrate and plant trace fossils) may be collected without a permit, from the surface without digging and for personal, hobby, educational, and noncommercial use only. A permit is required for research/scientific purposes… Trading, bartering, or selling any fossil material (plants, invertebrates, vertebrates, or any trace fossils) removed from National Forest System lands is prohibited..  In the meantime, for your reading pleasure see: Federal Register/Vol. 80, No. 74/Friday, April 17, 2015/Rules and Regulations and make certain to read the fine print.as there are some surprising “subrules”.

The BLM rules “resemble” those of the USFS and were published on 8/2/2022 when the BLM stated: The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI or Department) is promulgating this regulation under the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act. This regulation provides for the management, preservation, and protection of paleontological resources on lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management../.,Published Document: 2022-16405 (87 FR 47296).

Reading the Federal Resister is not a very enjoyable evening activity. However, in my humble opinion the BLM regs are less prescriptive than those of the USFS:  You may collect reasonable quantities of common invertebrate fossils such as mollusks and trilobites, but this must be for personal use, and the fossils may not be bartered or sold.

My advice to the fossils hunters is to visit with the local land managers and ask for their advice and perhaps ask about a location for collecting. I have found these employees to be quite helpful and nice, but perhaps a little cautious after receiving episodes of screaming and yelling from miscreants out in the field. Be respectful to these hard-working ladies and gentlemen as they have a wealth of useful information.

Please note that I have only scratched the surface on these collecting rules, and they may have different interpretations in different localities. For example, the amount (pounds) of fossils available as “causal collecting”.  So, TALK TO THE LAND MANAGERS. If I can perhaps clear up some rule or reg for you shoot me an email at csrockboy@yahoo.com.   Mike

As for the educational part of this article, I refer you to promulgating this regulation from the BLM. Who uses promulgating in everyday discussions? I guess the Federal bureaucracy since promulgate, in the context of administrative law, is a term used to describe the process of enacting an administrative final rule as an administrative regulation. A regulation is promulgated when a final rule is published in the Federal Register at the conclusion of the rulemaking process.. Now, your assignment is to use the verb or noun in a sentence within the next week. Increase your vocabulary. I did!

PARSETTENSITE, WHAT IS IT? AND HUNTING FOR LITHIUM

 

A Sept. 29 Facebook post said, Asheville North Carolina Sits on top of Billions of dollars of LITHIUM. Is this a coincidence that hurricane (Helene) destroyed all that area? This is the outcome of a well orchestrated man-made disaster, weather modification and geoengineering. Just hold that thought for a bit.

Albemarle Corp. is working to reopen and expand the Kings Mountain lithium mine in NC. Photo courtesy of North Carolina Public Radio, WNNC and WFAE.

Well, it was another winter wonderland here today in the Northland although it lacked the bitter cold of the last storm. Otherwise, all is really quiet at the ranch---really, really quiet. But quiet days are made for dark hot coffee, playing with minerals, feeding birds, and topping off the afternoon with a cool frosty IPA. Today the solitude was broken up by Minerals Live with Alfredo Petrov. Boy, that guy has had a traveling life. I believe today was the 96^th edition of Minerals Live and I have been able to tune in to most and enjoy the fantastic showcase of mineral collectors, dealers, artists, etc. Thank you, Brian, Eloïse, and Raquel.

The talk of minerals and the otherwise quietness around here made me miss, even more, my winter sojourns to Tucson for the warm weather and the Shows. So much, in fact, I rummaged around and made some reservations for next winter and the Tucson 2026 Show.

In examining a few acquisitions from last year, I ran across a box purchased from Shannon’s Minerals (ex-Mineralogical Research Company). I remember that I was totally unfamiliar with the mineral parsettensite but noted it was collected from the famous Foote mine in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. The mine is a well-known lithium pegmatite mine and I love pegmatite minerals, especially one with a chemical formula about a mile long: (K,Na,Ca)_7.5(Mn,Mg)₄₉Si₇₂O₁₆₈(OH)₅₀·nH₂O.

The Foote property started out as a gold mine ~1834 and produced the metal until closing ~ 1900. During that time span, ~1880, cassiterite, an ore of tin, was discovered and mined and the area became known as the Carolina Tin Belt (King, 1955). Gem spodumene (LiAlS₂O₈) was produced in the late 1800s and in the mid- 1930s commercial production of lithium from the spodumene commenced and cassiterite mining ceased. Lithium was mined until 1996 when mine owners discovered brine technology for producing lithium was less expensive than hard rock mining. With the closure of the mine a few reclamation projects started and that included at least one park. However, interest in mining remained and the land went through several ownerships until 2015 when Abermarle Corporation acquired the property and begin to prepare the old mine for production. On September 12, 2023, CBS Television reported (https://www.cbs17.com/news/north-carolina-news/) that “a $90 million agreement to purchase lithium from Albemarle, based in Charlotte, will increase domestic production of lithium for the nation’s battery supply chain, the Pentagon said in a news release.  The agreement under the Defense Production Act will help reopen the Kings Mountain lithium mine , which will support the manufacturing of about 1.2 million electric vehicles annually.” Production is slated to commence in late 2026. In 2024 (I think) Albemarle announced the “U.S. Department of Energy has awarded a nearly $150 million grant to Albemarle as part of the first set of projects funded by the President's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to expand domestic manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and the electrical grid and for materials and components currently imported from other countries.” Today (early March 2025), I don’t have the slightest idea if the grants from the federal government survived the recent slashing of grants and contracts.

The Foote Mine is a large open pit mine situated on perhaps the largest bedrock lithium deposit in the United States (Horton and others, 1981). According to MinDat, the granite pegmatite, previously mined for lithium, tin, beryllium, niobium, tantalum, and “mica,” is hosted in the Cherryville Quartz Monzonite, a Mississippian age batholith in the Carolina Piedmont Belt.  The Mine has produced 161 mineral species including 15 Types, many of which are rare phosphates.

Brown crystals of parsettensite scattered among crystals of quartz, pyrite and albite. Width FOV ~1.6 cm.

Scattered platy crystals of brown parsettensite. Note pyrite crystals, many of which are cubes. Width FOV ~7 mm.

Scattered sub- millimeter crystals on "sparkly" albite. 

Notice the translucent nature of these tiny crystals.

The best view of the platy crystals arranged perpendicular to the matrix.

At time the tiny brown crystals seem to "gather" in spherules. At least these micro balls are scattered around. 

The unknown.

Parsettensite is a product of a manganese-rich parent rock that has been subjected to metamorphism. Crystals usually are sub-millimeter in size and occur in some shade of brownish—yellow or honey yellow, copper red, or light brown. Exact hardness seems unknown but Webmineral estimates ~1.5 (Mohs). The mainly micro crystals have a sub-metallic luster, may be massive but usually are micaceous or platy octahedral sheet Mn-rich silicates (Eggleton and Guggenheim, 1994) situated on a crystalline matrix, usually albite and/or quartz, with pyrite and apatite. Clusters of these tiny crystals often appear to form spherules. Parsettensite is an uncommon mineral with the Type Locality in a former manganese mine in the Parsettens Alp, Switzerland.

As for the initial paragraph of this article, it is hard for me to believe but there are nut cases out there who believe the government can manipulate the weather. Unfortunately, the feds must then take valuable time to try and put these vicious rumors to rest. My mother was fond of stating that you can’t fix stupid.  

REFERENCES CITED

Eggleton, R.A. and S. Guggenheim, 1994, The use of electron optical methods to determine the crystal structure of a modulated phyllosilicate: Parsettensite: American Mineralogist, vol. 78, nos. 5-6.

Horton, J.W., Jr., and Butler, J.R., 1981, Geology and mining history of the Kings Mountain belt—A summary and status report: In Horton, J.W., Jr., Butler, J.R., and Milton, D.J., eds. Geological investigations of the Kings Mountain belt and adjacent areas in the Carolinas. Carolina Geological Society Field Trip Guidebook 1981. Columbia, South Carolina Geological Survey.

King, P. B., 1955, A geologic section across the southern Appalachians: An outline of the geology in the segment in Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina, In Russell, R. J., ed., Guides to southeastern geology. Boulder Colorado, Geological Society of America.

DONNAYITE-(Y): NO HISTORICAL OR POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE

 

Donnayite-Y, what a mineral! Wikipedia, that fount of all knowledge, describes (accessed February 2025) donnayite as having no historical or political significance, no common uses, no uses in fabrication of products, and most people do not even know it exists. Now, that is quite a buildup for any mineral and is one reason that I purchased the lonely perky box wallowing in a dusty tray.

The Fall of 2024’ was a busy time of year for me as after the move from Colorado Springs to Wisconsin I was valiantly trying to unpack my mineral specimens, along with numerous boxes of “household” you name it”. I was hoping that the area would offer a few rock and mineral shows that would break up my tedium of unpacking—but not much luck in that area. However, I did notice that Madison, home to both the UW Badgers and the seat of the Wisconsin government, was holding a show in late November. When the appointed weekend arrived the ole car was heading east to the Madison Gem and Mineral Club exhibits and show.

Madison Gem and Mineral Club Show 2024

I found several items with the show to be interesting, not the least of which was the $10 parking fee in addition to the gate fee plus the gasoline to and from Madison. Those expenses did not seem like a whiz bang deal for a non-Tucson show. However, rockhounds seemed to be hungry for a "show" and the event was packed on Saturday. 

I also found that the Midwest shows host a different variety of vendors than the Rocky Mountain shows. And that is understandable as the cratonic rocks of the Midwest are primarily Paleozoic and sedimentary in origin. As a result, vendors hustled “lots of” fossils, many of which were quite beautiful, tables of cab jewelry (few faceted pieces), slabs/hunks of polished limestone, plus a variety of agates, or at least chalcedony/flint nodules with lines. However, vendors selling “hard rock” minerals were very scarce, and almost non-existent. As a result, I purchased only a single specimen, that being the aforementioned donnayite-Y.

Other than the lonely perky box previously noted, donnayite-Y has, at least to me, an interesting chemical composition: three water molecules, six carbonate anions (negative charge), and four cations (positive charge)—sodium, calcium, strontium, yttrium. In fact, since yttrium is a rare earth element (REE) the Y stuck on the end of the written composition is, wait on it, an indication that yttrium is present: NaCaSr₃Y(CO₃)₆--3H₂0. It seemed to me that any mineral with yttrium ought to be worth a couple of bucks bucks. 

The previous owner of this specimen had a ed arrow pointing to this apparent stack and identifying such as donnyaite. Width FOV ~7 mm.

Donnayite-Y, is not only an “insignificant” mineral but one that seems quite difficult for a rockhound of my “quality” to identify. MinDat noted that donnayite-Y is often yellow in color but ranges to colorless, white, grey or perhaps reddish brown if included with hematite. The crystals are quite small in the .5 to 1.0 or 2.0 mm range, and soft (~ 3.0 Mohs). MinDat, and other mineral descriptive publications, seem to heavily rely on barrel-shaped, stacked layers as the major element in identification. Unfortunately, it seems that in many specimens donnayite-Y is platy or columnar or coarsely granular in appearance and then becomes even more difficult for me to identify. The material identified by the previous owner points to a apparent stack of small plates; however, I would not bet the farm that the ID is correct. Would I regret a incorrect ID? Maybe, but I have spent too many career years trying to paint everything in black and white and good and bad and right or wrong. Now I try to live a life of calm knowing that perhaps I will not succeed. Bit it gnaws on me that there is not any chance of success unless I try just one more time! As my hero Mark Twain once said, “the secret of getting ahead is getting started.” So now I am looking for a new specimen of donnayite-Y!

The specimen I purchased came from one of the quarries at Mount St. Hilaire probably the Poudrette quarry located in the East Hill suite of the Mont Saint-Hilaire alkaline complex (igneous rocks containing a high concentration of sodium and potassium, more so than in other igneous rocks and therefore containing feldspathoid minerals [lots of nepheline]) is one of the world’s most prolific mineral localities, with a species list exceeding 365 (MinDat now shows 433 valid minerals). No other locality in Canada, and very few in the world have produced as many species. With a current total of 50 type minerals (MinDat now lists 71 Type Minerals), the quarry has also produced more new species than any other locality in Canada, and accounts for about 25 per cent of all new species discovered in Canada.

Above is taken directly from the following:

GEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION OF CANADA, MINERALOGICAL ASSOCIATION OF CANADA, 2006 JOINT ANNUAL MEETING MONTRÉAL, QUÉBEC

FIELD TRIP 4A: GUIDEBOOK, MINERALOGY AND GEOLOGY OF THE POUDRETTE QUARRY, MONT SAINT-HILAIRE, QUÉBEC

Charles Normand & Peter Tarassoff

Microsoft Word - GuidebookMSHfinal2-JP2.doc (mcgill.ca)