Anthoinite

©

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Can you help make this a better article? What good localities have we missed? Can you supply pictures of better specimens than those we show here? Can you give us more and better information about the specimens from these localities? Can you supply better geological or historical information on these localities?

Below are some preliminary notes I have made about Anthoinite. This entry and thread has been made as a place holder for information that you will hopefully contribute about Anthoinite. It should be in no way be thought of as a claim I have staked out to write about this mineral, and in fact is an invitation for someone to step forward and create the article about this mineral. If you are so inclined and have questions about the format that such an article should have, go the The welcome topic at the top of the Best Minerals forum and read what has been posted there. Also take a look at some of the more mature articles that have already been written like Rhodochrosite, Adamite, Millerite etc. You will need also to pick out other images of Anthoinite that will go into the article.



Anthoinite
AlWO₃(OH)₃ Triclinic


There are about a dozen localities so far for this mineral.

Anthoinite Display collections?
WAl(O,OH)3
Congo, Democratic Republic of. (Zaire)
Maniema, Mt. Misobo tungsten mine. “The crystals are platy with grain sizes too small (a few microns) for single-crystal X-ray study or optical microscopic characterization. …Beautifully euhedral anthoinite pseudomorphs after scheelite are occasionally found which measure up to 10 cm in length.”1 Boy, these sound neat. I want one. I think very few good ones were ever collected.
1 Mineralogical Record, Vol. 81, 12, p 80.

Anthoinite
United States
Washington, King County, North Bend, Rainy Creek. This rough, gray green, 2 cm prismatic crystal was in Bart Cannon’s collection.
I think Bart now says that these were not exactly Anthoinite.

Anthonyite Rare species collections.
Cu2+(OH,Cl)2·3H2O
United States
Arizona, Bisbee, Cole Shaft. 1300 level. Not a mineral that most collectors would even want to put in their collection but which a few specialists might cherish. At least it is blue in color. Here it has been found “…in a raise some 40 feet above the track, in an area between the Lowell and Dallas shafts. Occurs as a violet crust of corroded crystals to 1/5 inch on crumbly, cupriferous pyrite. The occurrence was on the edge of a stope that had been burned many years before and was being reopened. The mine walls were washed before much material could be collected.”1 The mineral is water soluble and washing down the walls dissolved the mineral so no more could be collected. If you have any of this mineral you should keep it in a well sealed container.
1 Richard (Dick to his friends) Graeme, peerless Bisbee guru, Mineralogical Record, Vol. 12, 1981 p.290.

Anthonyite
Michigan, Houghton County, Calumet, Centennial Mine. “Two new minerals, anthonyite and calumetite have been found at the Centennial mine…Both species occur in pockets, and as encrustations on basalt. …Anthonyite occurs as delicate, lavender prisms up to 0.5 mm in length embedded and encrusted by an unidentified waxy green basic copper chloride. Other directly associated minerals are copper, cuprite, paratacamite, and an unidentified blue, isotropic, basic copper chlorite. …Anthonyite is monoclinic 2/m and occurs as crystals which, though small, have a high degree of perfection and are well suited to morphological study. …Many of the crystals are curved one or more times along the c axis; the plane of curvature is {010} and bending apparently occurs readily on the perfect cleavage on {100}. …Subsequent visits to the mine by Mr. Dean, the writer, and others brought to light a wealth of blue and green copper minerals, few of which were readily identifiable. Subsequent examination indicated that as many as six new species were involved, and this study was then begun. The minerals described here came from various levels in the Centennial mine, and since underground collecting was impossible at the time, the materials were collected by hastily looking through the skips of ore in the headframe, just before they were dumped. The new minerals apparently came from several areas between the 4000- and 5000-levels.”1 The one specimen left in the Michigan Tech collection that was donated by Sid Williams, the author of the description in the American Mineralogist, appears to have changed over the years. “…I can tell you that there is absolutely nothing on it that resembles the original description of the species (i.e. purple colored crystals),…It could well be that fluctuating humidity levels in less than ideal storage conditions have taken their toll on the specimen.”2
1 American Mineralogist, Vol. 48, 1963 p. 614-16. - 2 George Robinson, personal communication, 2002.


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Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/27/2012 08:49AM by Rock Currier.