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Identity HelpCody Wyoming Sulphur specimen

22nd Dec 2016 22:49 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

This is more of a locality question on the piece.

It is a specimen of sulphur with great crystals and hexahydrite. It has a label that says "Cody, Wyoming" and that is all that is on the label.

I wanted to post the photos on mindat but wanted to run this by people to see what they suggest. Just post it under Cody Wyoming or would anyone have a better idea where this may have come from there. The species are also not listed but this is one from a collector that had a big collection and his material was about as accurate as most I have gotten things from.

Any help would be appreciated.

Rolf

22nd Dec 2016 23:19 UTCTom Tucker

Rolf, your specimen is from a "hot springs" related feature, near the Shoshoni River ( formally the Stinking Water River) to the west end of the town of Cody. It was collected around 25 years ago, and I'm not certain of the collecting status at this point. The area has been well developed with WalMart, and the like. I'd prefer not putting the exact locality on Mindat - west end of Cody near US highway 16. A few years ago the locality was seriously disturbed by a company laying fiber optic cables, and a lot of pretty ordinary material was exposed on the surface. A lot of it is still there, but it's not as nice as your piece.

Further west along the highway on the south side are a few old prospect holes - World War 1 vintage ?? - that have yielded sulphur, hexahydrite (XRD identification) and gypsum.

22nd Dec 2016 23:27 UTCTom Tucker

I might add, I gave a large cabinet sized specimen of this sulphur maybe eight inches in diameter to a well known collecting friend in Tucson one year. But he thought it smelled so "bad" I think he tossed it into the river bed at Tucson. It would have provided many hundreds of nice micros. Tom

23rd Dec 2016 00:58 UTCTom Tucker

I see that Cody, Wyoming is listed as a locality for dahlite concretions, in association with the Bearthooth Mountains, which are two or three dozen miles to the north. These carbonate-apatite concretions are commonly found in many places where the Cretaceous age Thermopolis shale outcrops: north of Cody near the mouth of Clarks Fork Canyon, in the Pryor Mountains in both Montana and Wyoming, south of Lovell, Wyoming at Spence Dome, and in the vicinity of Sheep Mountain - too many general localities to note. They are common enough that a shoe box could be filled in a few minutes at many localities.

There is an older American Mineralogist article about their occurrence near Ishawooa, Wyoming (west of Cody), and R. Mitchell has written about them, as replacements of pyrite concretions. I'm not sure I believe that. The nodules generally have an irregular small hollow center, perhaps in a layer of hematite, and have a fibrous exterior crust. I've never seen any notable crystals in them.

There is a Czech book, something like "Encyclopedia of Minerals", also available in English, which has a photograph of identical dahlite concretions from I believe, a Czech locality. It would be interesting to know the stratigraphy and age of the Czech occurrence..

The vague locality, "Cody, Wyoming - Beartooth Mountains" should be discarded in favor of equally vague, but more exact, "Wyoming and Montana" - outcrops of the Thermopolis shale.

23rd Dec 2016 01:38 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Tom,

Thank you so much for all the information on this piece.

I liked the sulphur crystals so much I wanted to post them on mindat but since you have stated they are from near Cody, that I all I actually need to put.

I have two more sulphur photos I will also post.

Thanks again and you sure helped with this to be able to post the photos and know it is where this piece came from.

Rolf

23rd Dec 2016 05:17 UTCMatt Neuzil Expert

Interesting notes about the concretions in the Thermopolos shale! I did part of my field camp mapping near Lovell we stayed at a college there.

I believe we mapped the Goose Egg anticline and Thermopolos anticline. I didnt see any concretions but from what i remember, we didnt run into much of the shale. I did find a vertebrae from a sea turtle and plenty gypsum crystals in that "oh so fun" popcorn bentonite.

23rd Dec 2016 09:08 UTCErik Vercammen Expert

Especially for Tom:

I have the French Translation of the book:"Encyclopédie des Minéraux" by J. Kourimsky and F. Tvrz (sic), Gründ, Paris; the pic is on page 225, and it represents "staffelite" from Staffel, near Limburg, Germany

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