Missing IMA numbers?

Looking at IMA2009, there are a couple of gaps. No 003, 007, and 035. If the IMA has approved them, then there should be some information somewhere. If not, why the gaps?

Regards
Steve

The Commission hasn't released any info on those.

Steve: like Stu, I won't discuss specific cases, but remember that an IMA####-### number is the number of a *proposal*, not an *approval*. While the majority of proposals submitted do get approved promptly and subsequently have data released, there are a few every year for which this is not the case: they may be disapproved on various grounds, withdrawn by the authors, or suspended while waiting for additional data, redefinition of related species, etc. The IMA numbers of approved minerals that have suffixes "a", "b" etc are new species that did not get up first time around, but were resubmitted in later years with more/better data and were approved on the second/third etc attempt, so they would have given rise to similar apparent gaps in the data in their first year of submission.

Steve: an example is wakefieldite-(La): IMA1989-035a (approved only in 2007).

Thanks for clarifying guys. I was under the (incorrect) impression that they were approved, not proposed. I didn't think that proposals got that far.

Regards
Steve

We do have a category in our database for an IMA approval status of "Rejected" which can be used for cases such as this.

BUT, and this is very important, only in the unfortunate case of when a new proposed species is discussed publically before the approval process is complete and the final result is rejection.

Otherwise, as Stu and Andy suggest, we should not be discussing them on mindat at all.

Jolyon

Hi Jolyon

I wasn't after specific information about them, just curious as to why there were gaps.

Regards
Steve