FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Jordi Fabre]

Don't miss it. Giant "alpine fissures" in the Himalayas with also giant crystals of transparent Quartz.

[Pierre Joubert]

Spectacular indeed! Thank you John and Jordi.

[James Catmur]

Pierre

Any pockets lke that near you? Spectacular.

[Pierre Joubert]

[Peter Lemkin]

Few professional climbers that go into the Himalaya are geologists or mineral collectors, but I have heard some reports from some of them of crystals they have seen along the way [which they have neither the time, interest nor ability to transport let alone dig out]. One wonders what mineral treasures must exist even at Base Camp levels there.....

...yes those are very clear and very large and lovely XX of Quartz...I'll take any anyone is giving away ;-)

[Jordi Fabre]

Tucson 02/01/2018

The time of the Westward Look has already arrived.
Officially this hi-end Show starts today but yesterday the vast majority of the rooms were already open, converted into temples of wonders ;-)

More to come...
European correspondent of the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show®

[John S. White]

Hi Jim: did not mean to ignore your comment. I agree that the association is odd but when I was at the museum I X-rayed one of these inclusions and got cristobalite. Same with John Koivula at GiA. John also found some of them gave a fluorite pattern

[Jim Robison]

Thanks John
Do you know of other instances where the quartz/cristobalite associations occur? I'd be interested to know, in general, the environments these these two minerals, and trydimite, occur in and if they are generally mutually exclusive or inclusive. I could probably find this with a detailed web search, but think you can likely summarize to answer my questions. I know that wandering around the shows and seeing all the wonderful minerals is rather distracting at the moment. So no great rush in getting back to me.

Jim

[Chris Rayburn]

Hi Jim and John,

Don't mean to insert myself into this exchange, but I too am intrigued by co-occurrence of quartz and cristobalite. Is it possible that changing PT conditions during crystallization favored first cristobalite and then quartz, leading to the cristobalite inclusions? I would think that conditions would need to change rapidly in order for the cristobalite to be preserved.

[Jordi Fabre]

Tucson 02/02/2018

The Westward Look Hotel Show goes on its way.

More to come...
European correspondent of the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show®

[Jean Sendero]

A few other ones from the Westward Look that grab my eye. Of course, all Mexican.

More later from the WWL and HTCC

Cheers

[Jean Sendero]

Today at the Westward Look was the “Collector of the Day” featuring Dr Peter Megaw and his collection of super ultra-fine Mexican minerals. Peter was setting up early with his daughter Lauren who flew in from Stanford the night before to help Peter.

Two cases, eight shelves, filled with some of Peter's favourites arranged in a different manner that I normally see from Peter's exhibits. Peter usually will display by localities, this time, the groupings were more thematic with shelfs with “Type or rare”, Thumbnails (on acrylic…..), blue minerals, pseudomorphs, old and historic specimens (not all from Mexico), Simply Beautiful specimens, Silver Minerals and quartz.

Regardless what shelf the specimen was sitting on, everything that Peter put out there were simply great.

[Jean Sendero]

The shelves

[Jean Sendero]

More mexican specimens from Mexico that caught my eye at the Westward Look.

Evan Jones of Unique Minerals and Scott Werschky of Miner’s Lunchbox, each had some amazing paradamite and legrandite from the early 2017 find that only starts to make its way to the market now.

[Jean Sendero]

The miscellaneous Mexicans