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Joined: 29 Aug 2022
Posts: 2
Location: New Almaden, California
Posted: Feb 18, 2023 19:55 Post subject: Re: Kyawthuite, the rarest mineral on earth mini guide
Hi there,
I find these useful to learn about interesting mineral discoveries, but I take the "rarest" designation with a grain of salt because that is a very subjective thing. Mineralogy is ever changing and markets for minerals are even more capricious, so trying to say this or that is the rarest is really kind of a silly thing. I have learned about some minerals for which there is only one microscopic scrap and no longer enough material left for further analysis. Tedhadleyite is one example.
Posted: Feb 18, 2023 20:00 Post subject: Re: Kyawthuite, the rarest mineral on earth mini guide
Definitely, I agree with this. It is an ever changing subject, you never know one day a significant source of the material may be found making it ultra common for example. To be fair it’s just for the sake of making it sound more interesting…it is still an ultra rare mineral in the sense only a significant specimen exists. But thank you for your comment! It is 100% correct.
Posted: Feb 18, 2023 20:30 Post subject: Re: Kyawthuite, the rarest mineral on earth mini guide
I suppose the "rarest" minerals are the ones for which there was only one known specimen and that was later lost or destroyed, leaving none at all in any collection whether public or private.
Posted: Feb 19, 2023 06:02 Post subject: Re: Kyawthuite, the rarest mineral on earth mini guide
Hello Alfredo,
In this case, IMA does not recognize the species, I think.
I believe the Madagascar pezzottaite was only found in one cavity.
1 thousand specimens? Exhausted today?
It seems to me the rare mineral – gem.
attached some pictures of pezzotaite.
Posted: Feb 19, 2023 10:42 Post subject: Re: Kyawthuite, the rarest mineral on earth mini guide
Roger, one thousand specimens makes it a "common" mineral, not a "rare" one, for the systematic species collectors! ;))
I suppose "rare" and "common" are rather uselessly vague adjectives, like trying to describe climates using only the words "hot" and "cold". The word is meaningless without numerical data.
Posted: Feb 19, 2023 12:51 Post subject: Re: Kyawthuite, the rarest mineral on earth mini guide
As you say it all depends on how you measure it. Like so many things, unit matter: Number of known specimens; total weight of all known specimens, the total weight of the actual known mineral (so excluding other minerals present in the specimens), etc. As so often in life you can pick the units to get the answer you want. Clearly, as you said, Jamescatmurite is the rarest as it scores 0 on any unit of measure!
Posted: Feb 19, 2023 15:01 Post subject: Re: Kyawthuite, the rarest mineral on earth mini guide
To what James wrote above, I'll add another factor: number of localities. Which is more rare: a mineral that occurs at only one locality on the planet, but is available there in kilogram quantities or even tons, or a mineral that occurs at hundreds of localities but only a few milligrams or micrograms at each place?
Most people consider gold to be rare, although it is strange but true that by any of these mineralogical criteria, native gold is a very common mineral, certainly among the top 10% of common species out of the roughly 6,000 species currently known.
Posted: Feb 19, 2023 15:38 Post subject: Re: Kyawthuite, the rarest mineral on earth mini guide
Precisely, gold is a very special case.
What is the origin of the formation of nuggets?
I think that a quantity of gold escaped the migration to the core of the planet because it was not in a metallic state, but combined with elements such as tellurium, forming unstable combinations.
Or did the telluride anions act as a mineralizer by concentrating the finely dispersed gold like sulfur did for copper?
What was the role of the bacteria that concentrated it in the pegmatites?
Posted: Feb 20, 2023 04:01 Post subject: Re: Kyawthuite, the rarest mineral on earth mini guide
I forgot that one!
alfredo wrote:
To what James wrote above, I'll add another factor: number of localities. Which is more rare: a mineral that occurs at only one locality on the planet, but is available there in kilogram quantities or even tons, or a mineral that occurs at hundreds of localities but only a few milligrams or micrograms at each place?
Most people consider gold to be rare, although it is strange but true that by any of these mineralogical criteria, native gold is a very common mineral, certainly among the top 10% of common species out of the roughly 6,000 species currently known.
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