FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[VRigatti]

This cluster of fluorite on quartz is from Berbes, Spain. The intergrown crystals (3.5 cm on edge) have sharp edges with marvelous phantoms that are red-violet in color.

[Gerhard Brandstetter]

I hope you forgive me for showing you a Fluorite without any crystals.
Of course this special rarity is among my favourites!

Fluorite ps. fossil wood (Dadoxylon sp.), Permian age
Gneisenau street, Hilbersdorf, Chemnitz, Saxony, Germany

Found some years ago during construction works. Huge logs up to many meters were recovered, but Fluorite was always rare.
Now the whole town with its petrified forest is a protected geological area and collecting is strictly forbidden.

[Gerhard Brandstetter]

Hilbersdorf is a part of Chemnitz, Gneisenau street is a "normal" street inside the town.
https://www.google.at/maps/place/Gneisenaustra%C3%9Fe,+09131+Chemnitz,+Alemania/@50.8520235,12.940834,588m/data=
(link normalized by FMF)

The petrified forest of Chemnitz is well documented - sediments of Permian age with huge logs and a rich fauna and flora. Fluorite replacing fossil wood has always been rare and is a German classic. The museum in the "Tietz" has a fantastic exhibition about the petrified forest inside Chemnitz.

[Peter Lemkin]

That is a great log partly after fluorite! Personally, I love and collect such oddities and pseudomorphs, etc. As far are being found just under a city street, the type-location for danburite is in Danbury, Connecticut, USA and is now under a large city parking lot - accessible to no one. [and there is a high suspicion that more xx of danburite are still under those parked cars]. I discovered this when I was a student at Yale and drove to Danbury following directions from an old minerals of Connecticut guide book. Confused, standing in a parking lot I asked someone where the famous danburite location was and they told me I was standing over it. There are several other such examples I am aware of - and they always sadden me. Most of the World doesn't understand the importance of minerals and mineralogy - to them they are 'just rocks'.

[Jesse Fisher]

Far too many classic mineral localities are no longer accessible, or even existent. The Heights Mine is a good example. During the mid to late 19th century an underground Heights Mine was established to recover iron ore from a series of mineralized veins and associated metasomatic flats near the village of Eastgate, in Weardale. During the 1960s and 70s these old mine workings became popular with local collectors, and many specimens of fluorite (usually bright green, but occasionally other colors as well) were recovered. In the late 1970s a crushed stone quarry was established on the site, and over the years has slowly removed the mineralization and obliterated the mine workings. Through the end of the 20th century new material would occasionally find it's way out, but in recent years much, if not all the old workings and associated mineral deposits have been removed by quarrying, rendering this an essentially extinct locality.

Specimens known to have come from the old underground workings can be labeled "Heights Mine," while newer ones recovered during the quarrying operation are labeled "Heights Quarry." Without information specifying when/where specimens were recovered, it is impossible to tell the difference, and most recent specimens are labeled as coming from the quarry. The specimen in the photo came out of a collection that was assembled in the 1970s, so likely dates to that time.

[VRigatti]

Superb Fluorite Jesse!!

[VRigatti]

Here is a grouping of light green, multi-stepped fluorites with purple phantoms from Shangbao (one of my favorite locales). The matrix is quartz with some nice accenting calcite.

[colin robinson]

Jesse, Heights quarry has been working for over 100 years. Probably not continuously but it has still existed as a stone quarry. Also worth noting is that most of the flats associated with the south vein are still there, albeit now covered by landscaping. As the quarry face advanced towards the south side of the flats it stopped as the limestone was contaminated by iron and silica. They then cut through the south vein near to its junction with west cross vein and continued working north and east leaving most of the mineralization intact. Something like 300,000 tonnes of west cross vein material was removed to make sea defenses near Sunderland. That is the great shame about the recent history of Heights as only a miniscule proportion of the fluorite specimens possible were recovered.

[Tobi]

Wonderful specimens, Jesse and Vincent!

[Jesse Fisher]

New from Tucson, not the most colorful fluorite around, but I thought the crystallographicly oriented second generation of cube-octahedrons on the points of first generation octahedrons very interesting. I originally referred to this as "epitaxial" orientation, but was told by a mineralogist friend that epitaxy refers to the oriented overgrowth of two different minerals. We couldn't, however, think of the proper term for a fluorite-on-fluorite arrangement such as this.

[Jesse Fisher]

Another new fluorite from the recent Tucson show. The exact location is given as "Jebel Tighemi, Taourirt, Morocco." Jebel Tighemi is not a listed location on Mindat, so perhaps this is a new find?

[Jordi Fabre]

[VRigatti]

This green fluorite from Piaotang mine in China was a new find in 2017. It is fairly large with sharp phantoms, and with faces that are 9 cm across. Internally are white barite crystals that grew on the stepped face of an earlier generation of fluorite, showing an unusual appearance. At least that is how it appears to me. Any other thoughts on how these inclusions may have formed? Sorry for the picture quality...

[Bob Harman]

About 2005 quarry workers blasted thru a large void in the White Rock Quarry aka Edward Kraemer & Sons Quarry in Clay Center Ohio. [Sometimes this quarry is erroneously called Clay Center Quarry, but this is only the nearby Ohio town and not the correct quarry name.]

Anyway many many high quality specimens of root beer colored fluorites with celestine were mined. A number of us knew the contract specimen miners so we were able to acquire a number of varied specimens. This is one example from that find. Numerous smaller fluorites admixed with white bladed celestine. BOB

[Jordi Fabre]