LAIHUNITE: EL PASO COUNTY, COLORADO

As readers of this Blog realize, I am always on the lookout for “different” minerals for my modest collection, and for interesting minerals from the Intermountain West and a few Plains states. It is hard to define “different” other than to state a mineral that others might overlook or a mineral I do not recognize (not really that hard) or a mineral that just seems weird to me! So, it was no surprise (at least to me) that after observing a small specimen of laihunite, I nabbed it right off the shelf for a couple of bucks (at Sauktown Sales).  It had sort of a South Pacific ring to the name. But then, it turned out to be sort of a double serendipitous moment as the specimen was from El Paso County, Colorado, at Crystal Park.  That locality is only a few miles from my home in Colorado Springs.  Unfortunately, Crystal Park is on private land and generally inaccessible to the average roaming rockhound.  So, I was happy to acquire a specimen from an older collection.

 

Photomicrograph of olive-colored fayalite with black laihunite, the weathering product.  Width of fayalite crystal is ~2.2 mm.   The additional "black" material is probably a mixture of magnetite and laihunite as the specimen is partially magnetic.

In introductory geology classes instructors always talk about the “mineral” olivine—for many reasons.  Olivine is a magnesium-iron silicate [(MgFe)₂SiO₄] and may be the most common mineral in the earth’s mantle.  It usually is associated with basalt, or a few metamorphic rocks, or ultramafic rocks such as dunite or peridotite.  However, the kicker is that olivine is not really a mineral but simply gives its name to a solid solution group or series—the Olivine Group.  Forsterite is the magnesium-rich end member while fayalite is the iron-rich other member.  Olivine is a general term (in introductory geology and in the vocabulary of most rockhounds) indicating a composition somewhere in the middle between these two end members.  But that is OK as most rockhounds are more interested in the gemstone segment of olivine, peridot.

Although fairly rare in the mineral world, laihunite is now known to be an iron silicate probably derived from the weathering of fayalite (the iron-rich olivine).  In addition, some of the iron in the mineral is ferrous iron while another portion is ferric iron.  Eckel and others (1997) noted that laihunite is iron deficient in that it contains only 1.5 atoms of Fe for each Si atom.  The formula is written as [(Fe^2+Fe3+)₂(SiO₄)₂.

Additional photomicrograph of fayalite and laihunite (as above)

As best that I can determine from www.MinDat.org, laihunite is only found at two general localities in the U.S.: the CrystalPark/St. Peters Dome area of Colorado (Pikes Peak), and the Obsidian Cliffs area of Oregon (North Sister Mountain).  In addition, there are a few other areas yielding the mineral in scattered parts of the world—but not many.  At Crystal Park Eckel and others (1997) reported the laihunite occurs in a quartz-microcline-biotite pegmatite (part of the Precambrian Pikes Peak Batholith). 

  

By the way, the name laihunite has nothing to do with the South Pacific but was named for the Laihe iron deposit in Manchuria, China.  But, I suppose that not many rockhounds have a sample of this mineral in their collection!

REFERENCES CITED

Eckel, E. B. (and others), 1997, Minerals of Colorado: Friends of Colorado—Colorado Chapter and Denver Museum of Natural History, Denver.

 

SKUTTERUDITE: COBALT-NICKEL ARSENIDE

I have been interested in the mineral skutterudite since my mineralogy class a number of years ago.  It was a bright shiny mineral with nice crystals, and the name---who could not appreciate a name like skutterudite?  It just rolls off the tongue!  Several years later I drove through the nickel mining area of Sudbury, Ontario, and was amazed at what fumes from a nickel smelter could do to living organisms.  But, at a museum I noticed a beautiful specimen of cobalt-nickel arsenide—skutterudite—and decided that someday I would have some of those shiny crystals!  That day came on Friday when I visited the Spring Colorado Mineral and Fossil Show in Denver.

Specimen of skutterudite from Morocco with nice octahedral crystals on fresh surface. The majority of the surface, bottom and sides of specimen, is massive and granular.  White mineral is calcite.  Specimen is difficult to photograph as bright metallic luster reflects light.  Length of specimen ~4 cm.

Skutterudite [(Co,Fe,Ni)As_2-3] has a very metallic luster, sort of a silver to tin-white color, and a hardness of 6 (Mohs) or a little less.  If crystals are present they are usually cubic or octahedral (Isometric) but often specimens are massive or granular.  The mineral is a major ore of cobalt and nickel.

The specimen I purchased came from the 12 Irhtem Mine in the Bou Azzer Mining District of the Anti-Atlas Mountains of southern Morocco, an area “famous” for producing the world’s best specimens of skutterite (and erythrite, roselite, talmessite, wendwilsonite, and gersdoffite). The Bou Azzer skutterudite has a fairly high cobalt content (12%-18.5%) with nickel coming in at 7%-7.5% and iron at 1.4%-8.85%.  In addition, the skutterudite has an unusually high gold content of 120 grams per ton.  It is interesting to note that the local population (Berbers) knew about the toxicity of the outcropping arsenates long before the onset of commercial mining—they used it for insect control and rat poison.

Photomicrograph of skutterudite crystals each ~ 2 mm.

Serpentinization (formation of serpentine group minerals by low temperature metamorphism) and weathering processes of the nickel-cobalt ores begin sometime in the Precambrian (prior to 800 Ma) but may have reached a peak during an orogenic volcanic episode about 550 Ma.  The process finally reached an end during an intense deformation and faulting about 250 Ma.  The highest grade ores are always associated with the serpentine group minerals, and found in areas of intense deformation.

Nickel oxidizes and corrodes quite slowly and therefore is commonly used as a plating agent, and in alloys with other metals (commonly with steel as in stainless steel).  Cobalt is also used in alloys, commonly to strengthen steel.  However, the most people know about “cobalt blue” where cobalt silicate imparts a beautiful blue color to glass, ceramics, and paint.

Skutterudite (cobalt-rich) also is in solid solution with choanthite (nickel-rich) and smaltite (intermediate).  It is my understanding that identification of hand specimens by physical appearance is quite difficult.

Information about mining at Bou Azzer was gleaned from: www.blnz.com/news/2008/05/14/Famous_mineral_localities_AZZER_MOROCCO_9115.html.