FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Ken]

I've come across an area where several minerals have been in an environment that has caused many of them to become altered/modified. Here's a very odd looking piece of quartz, it looks as if that colored material was being squeezed out of the stone, it has a hardness of 7.5-8.0. The center of the stone is made up of crystals that have ridges or lines. Just curious, how much of a change does a mineral have to go through before it's classified as a new mineral?

[alfredo]

To be classified as a new mineral species it needs to have a different chemical composition and/or a different crystal structure than any previously known mineral species; just having a different appearance is not enough. Based on your photos, the material you found is still quartz, a mineral that occurs on many different colors and shapes, so it would not qualify as a new mineral.