Need help Identifying specimen

Hello everyone, I need help identifying this cool looking specimen. Unfortunately when I got it did not have any identification on it.

The luster is Adamantine. light refects off it like glass shards do.
The color is light green with whitish green hair like crystals growing off the main crystals.
Size of the specimen is 2" x 2"
The crystal blades shatter when touched with anything heaver than a very light touch.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Mark

Aurichalcite?

gypsum ?
Difficult to say anything without knowing where it's from, and with no matrix.

i think more aurichalcite cause all the green gypsum i remember look different .the one from Australia have more mint green colour . the one from Poland with the supposed libethenite inclusions (i think than someone recently tell than he made test and he find atacamite as result for inclusions) have a dark green colour . only the Morrocan one with rosasite inclusions can have colour than fit but the crystal have the more often a roses shape. the only acicular morrocan specimens are shorter and have a malachite green colour.it's why i think this specimen is aurichalcite but for a specific locality without a matrix it's nearly impossible . maybe Atacama desert Chile or thousands other possibilities. good luck bye

I wonder if the green color is even natural.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

yeah can be a kind of dyed gypsum or an other acicular minerals like a zeolite .the minerals dealer from india often dyed their zeolite like okenite , mordenite or thaumasite and said than it's a brand new find rare variety and sell it ten time the normal price.

Can you bend the crystals or scratch them with your fingernail?

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

I believe it's man-made. There is a phosphate (the cation escapes me) that easily produces colorless needles of this shape. Add a little dye and you can have any color you want.

I have a selenite from Mt. Gunson, South Australia that looks very much like it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/2012 08:42PM by Dennis Tryon.

The crystal won't bent they shatter into pieces when I tried it. My finger nail could not scratch it.

It could be from Mt. Gunson there we several specimens in the collection that were labeled from that location.

The crystal terminations, form and colour do not look correct for Mt Gunson gypsum/selenite in my opinion. It looks more like aurichalcite, although the blades are rather long for that species, and are usually in more organized blooms on matrix. So if ruling out gypsum and aurichalcite, as Steve suggested it may be man made.

Aurichalcite is a carbonate, so you could try testing a broken piece in some HCL or vinegar to see if there is any reaction causing bubbles.

regards,
stephanie



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/13/2012 02:11AM by Stephanie Martin.

If that is an aurichalcite specimen it is the best one anyone ever saw.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

not sure i seen recently seen an aurichalcite specimen from 79 mine Arizona with very long and astonishing spray of accicular crystals. some of the spray have near an inch large. i think a 2" large can be possible but the green color of this one in this topic seem little bit weird.

The color and size of the crystals are not what I would expect for aurichalcite. It looks like something produced using one of those crystal growing kits given to children....

Try breaking off a small piece and seeing if it is soluble in hot water.

I agree with Steve. It looks man-made to me. And Jolyon's suggestion is a good one.

it seem easy to said than it's man-made .i can easily named 20 kind of green acicular spray like minerals. for example :serpierite ,agardite ,gilalite, creaseyite, syncosite, celadonite, arthurite, redgillite, lanarkite, minyulite, antlerite, arsenogoyazite, cyanotrichyte, larisaite, strashiminite, mimetite, pyromorphite, antlerite or cuprian variety of other minerals like ernstite sklodowskite and ect. probably than many of them really won't fit but that make a lot of minerals and localities to verified before to be able to say than this specimens doesn't exist naturally . many of this minerals are rarely found in xl sprayx but the past show us than big specimen of minerals like this can be found sometimes . an other possibility can be than it's a natural specimen but soaked in a dying agent. by looking at many specimens i seen one of aragonite with a coralian shape dyed in green by man the color look really like this one. the best idea it's to make the test suggested by the others to eliminate some species

I don't know that Mark's specimen is man-made, but it kind of looks it to me. Jolyon suggested trying to dissolve a small piece in hot water and that seems like a reasonable test. If the specimen is man-made it is most likely soluble in water and that is an easy test to make.

I will give the water test to it this weekend when I get back home.

Thanks for all the help everyone.