Atacamite

For the United States, atacamite occurs at Tiger and Bisbee, Arizona, Majuba Hill, Nevada, Gold Hill, and the Pole Star mine both in Tooele County, Utah. The atacamite from Bisbee, and Majuba Hill are found in cuprite nodules. The Bisbee atacamites are associated with connellite, paratacamite, spangolite and claringbullite. The atacamite from Majuba Hill is associated with connellite and native copper.

The Gold Hill atacamites occur in and on altered cuprite with the associations being conichalcite, olivenite, native copper and sometimes lavendulan. At Gold Hill it also occurs with parnauite, olivenite, pharmacosiderite, and tennantite in a quartz matrix. At the Pole Star mine, the atacamite occurs on quartz with no other obvious associations.

Hi Brent
thanks for the info.
there are a lot of atacamite sites not listed here, I was concentrating on those I knew personally and/or those with good images available - if you can upload some I will add them if they look suitable (please let me know when you do so)
Ralph.

Regards,
Ralph

Brent, We are not up for trying to describe every locality for every mineral, just the best ones. What are the best ones? Thats a tough question, but when you consider the number of quartz, fluorite and calcite localities you can see the need to draw a line in the sand somewhere. Usually if the locality has good macro crystals of something then it is more or less automatically included if we know about it. What about the Atacamite localities where there are good micro crystals. Well, if specimens from a particular locality are wide spread like the Mina Farola near Copiapo, Chile it gets included. If some really great images of micro atacamites from other localities are available we will probably cave in and include some of them, especially if they interesting associations. If a specimen is from the type locality but it was not found there in good crystals we would probably include a picture of one of those. If the mineral is pretty ratty but like say azurite from Franklin, NY, we would probably include one. If the mineral usually occurs in good crystals, but from some localities it comes in good cutting grade material we will include pictures of good cut and polished specimens like agates, datolite, rhodochrosite howlite, variscite, chrysophrase etc. If a mineral occurs only in micron sized grains in massive material, we will put in a microprobe image if that is all we can get. We are prepared to be pretty liberal, but we just can't do it all. What do you think we should include and not include?

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Does atacamite of biological origin count as an occurance? It is found in the mouth parts of "bloodworms" genus Glycera.
Ref. Helga Lichtenegger, Thomas Schöberl, Galen D. Stucky et al., "High Abrasion Resistance with Sparse Mineralization: Copper Biomineral in Worm Jaws", Science 298 (2002) no. 5592 pp 389-392

We would probably not put it in Best Minerals unless someone would give us a picture of the worm and hopefully a nice microphotograph of the atacamite (tooth? teeth?) that it used. I think if we had those we would definitely want to include it in the article to help lend perspective to what is possible for the mineral. That is an interesting reference though. We may put it in anyway.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

I suspect this last one will be SEM or TEM photos a few microns across, but I have an open mind.

Regards,
Ralph

The same here Ralph, lets see if anyone has enough interest to come up with a picture or two.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Ralph,
I went and cleaned up the formatting in the atacamite article. Take a look at it and lets discuss any changes you would like to make.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Just a tiny correction:
On the first page of this proto-article thread, at Chile/Atacama region, the link to photo-171931 is captioned 'Atacamite, Olivenite 8.5mm wide.' When you follow the link, the photo caption itself says Atacamite, Libethenite (and to my limited knowledge, that's indeed what it is - I have a similar piece).

Cheers, Gerhard

Gerhard,
Thanks for the correction which I have just made. Thats the beauty of an online deal like this one. You can correct any mistakes, they do not have to be engraved in printed matter forever.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Howdy Ralph and Rcok,

In regard to the Gomersal Mine;

The mine site has been rehabilitated and replaced with a large dam to prevent any access.
All access to this property is now banned.

Cheers Mark.

We will never have all the answers, only more questions!

Hi Ralph:

The Atacamite photo #425903 is an old Ward's sample from the E3 bench at Chuquicamata. It may not a World's Best Atacamite but it will fill the hole in the Chuquicamata entry.