Copper Locality - Siberia

This is an old specimen, with sharp copper crystals, associated with quartz, on a matrix of what looks like light brown dolomite (but may be a weathered igneous rock). It's 51 mm. wide, and both sides are shown in the photo. It came from the collection of Scottish collector Robert Ferguson (1767-1840), and was labeled as "Copper, Siberia". I am hoping that someone familiar with Russian localities can help me narrow down possible choices for it's origin.

In that regard, I note that the Mindat hierarchy lists only two localities, and a few minerals, under "Siberia", but "Eastern Siberia Region" and "Western SIberia Region" each have dozens of localities with very many minerals listed. Logically, it would seem that these would be sublocalities of Siberia, but I realize that the geographic and political boundaries of Siberia have changed many times in the past, so I am sure that's part of the problem. Anyway, I'm hoping to learn what the likely locality or localities were for copper specimens like this, in the early 19th century, that wound up in European collections.





Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2012 06:18PM by Kelly Nash.

Apparently the specimen is from Middle or Southern Ural or fromRudnyi Altai. Only in these two regions of Siberia copper mines with native metal were exists in this time.

Thanks, Pavel, that's very helpful. It does look similar to some of the specimens from the Turjinskii Mine, but for now I guess those areas are about as close as I can get.

Another possibility is Eastern Kazakhstan. It is essentially in SE Siberia and geologically is largely a part of the Altai Mountains. Native copper is known from there too.

You are right, Kelly, that the term Siberia was often applied very broadly. In 1700s-early 1800s, even the Urals was often referred to as Siberia.

I'd spoke with peoples about the specimen. They decided, that it is very probably the specimen origins from Mednorudyansk deposit. They saw such type matrix rock on the most old dumps here.

Thanks, Michael. I hadn't thought about Kazakhstan as a possibility. That would mean even saying the piece is from Russia might not have been a big enough area.

Pavel - I thought the matrix might be diagnostic. It does look like dolomite rock. I hope that someday all the Mindat locality descriptions for ore deposits include something about host rocks. Of course, having one specimen that has a dolomite matrix doesn't mean the whole ore deposit is hosted in dolomite, but every clue helps.

Hi all,
i just got some specimens (as every year) from 19th century collections or older including copper minerals from "Siberia" .. almost all this material is from the Ural Mts. For instance, most Robert Damon specimens from Nizhni Tagil are labeled Siberia.

A similar specimen to the pictured one above that i received is labeled to be from Gumeschewsk (southern Ural) .. so this adds another possibility.

I agree with Pavel that the Altai Mts are a possibility too ... but most specimens from that timeframe labeled Siberia are from different locations of the Ural Mts

Cheers
Roger

Gumeshevskii mine is part of Mednorudyanskoe deposit. It was the most famous locality of malachite on Ural/