FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Randall]

I have examples of a hematite pseudomorph from Indian Mountain, Cherokee County, Alabama. The crystals are matte black one to two millimeters. Some terminations seem to be rounded triangles and some crystals in profile look like very fat bow ties. The matrix of the first example is a light tan porous chert with many cavities come with drusy quartz (first picture). Second picture is a close view of one cavity. The third and fourth pictures show the same crystal group on drusy quartz.

[Matt_Zukowski]

Are you sure these are pseudomorphs and not just corroded crystals of some kind. If they are pseudos of some bowtie habit, it could be a zeolite like stilbite, but the pictures don't make me confident at all about this. With just pictures i don't think we can tell you anything definitive.

I recommend you go to a local geology club, or better yet, a local school with a geology department, and show the sample to them.

Good luck.

[Randall]

Thank you Matt for replying.
But in the fourth picture there is a hole in the crystal to the right. And in the second picture you can see broken crystals showing the outline of the pseudomorph. Most of the crystals, if not all, are hollow. This is like the hematite pseudomorphs after pyrite found at Graves Mtn. Indian Mtn. was mined for iron ore, but the ore is contaminated by phosphates (strengite, kidwellite, rockbridgeite). Not the type of geology I would expect to find zeolites.

[James Catmur]

Looks like an epimorph or perimorph of something. Find a broken crystal and see if you can work out the form of the mineral the epimorph covered

[Kevin Schofield]