Search Results
9hRe: Clear Creek Canyon, Goat Mountain, San Benito County, California, USAReply from Ralph S Bottrill in Localities.Thanks John and Jeff. Hopefully those photos can be added? Presumably the mountkeithite is rich in Mn from the colour? I had wondered if the hydromagnesite had been tested as ones I have tested can be highly variable in mineralogy.
9hRe: the Tongbei locality page needing to be cleaned up and 2 further localities to be added.Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Improving Mindat.org.OK Peter you can search for a replacement cable on the computer ...oooh, ok never mind!PS did you get my email about visiting next week?
22hRe: the Tongbei locality page needing to be cleaned up and 2 further localities to be added.Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Improving Mindat.org.Hi Peter you should be able to update these pages and add these refs? We don’t currently have a China expert.
22hRe: Clear Creek Canyon, Goat Mountain, San Benito County, California, USAReply from Ralph S Bottrill in Localities.Thanks Gunnar for getting back on this. I updated the validation on mountkeithite. Did you happen to test the hydromagnesite and find artinite there, or could it be from the nearby Artinite pit? There seems to be a lot of Clear Creek locations in the area and we need a local expert to advise on ...
1dRe: Important notice - email verification will be enabled!Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Improving Mindat.org.Still not working for me - I get the email, login accordingly, but nothing changes to say I am verified, so I am concerned I will be locked out.
1dRe: Questionable chromiteReply from Ralph S Bottrill in Photos.Yes but with an inactive uploaded and without a thin section it’s best left as user only and forgotten.
1dRe: The first museums and early mineral collectionsReply from Ralph S Bottrill to an article.Rear work, very interesting!
3dRe: Important notice - email verification will be enabled!Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Improving Mindat.org.I tried a couple times but don’t see any red notice.
3dRe: Questionable chromiteReply from Ralph S Bottrill in Photos.Maybe, if lacking analyses, they should be changed to spinel group? In the Tasmanian ultramafics magnesiospinel is usually dominant but there is a great deal of chromite and magnetite also, and sometimes spinel and hercynite.In the original photo the mafic mineral looks mostly like a pyroxene ...
6dRe: Photos shown after a search?Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Improving Mindat.org.These searches can be a bit idiosyncratic but there are a couple complicating factors. One photo was marked user only but I made it public as it was the only accepted image of the mineral from the location. The other two are both of one lueshite crystal which was suggested to contain minor fersmite ...
1wRe: Wrong collectionReply from Ralph S Bottrill in Photos.Golly, I remember those punched card filing systems which suddenly when obsolete when personal computers hit the market!
1wRe: Barranco Hondo, Tenerife, Santa Cruz de Tenerife Province, Canary Islands, SpainReply from Ralph S Bottrill in Localities.It does sound odd, but I have worked with Harald and he is a an experienced and careful worker. The paper does describe a large range of geological settings, including carbonatites, syenite pegmatites, skarns, xenoliths, hydrothermal base metal + gold and vanadium systems, supergene alteration etc. ...
1wRe: MinID bulk creation?Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Improving Mindat.org.James Catmur ✉️the hard bit will be the locality mapping as it will throw up all the diferences Exactly, as I said before. Not many collectors have their specimen locations exactly matching Mindat, so if you did a bulk upload you would get a huge stack of “new” locations ...
1wRe: POTD - all adamite ?Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Education.Compare the blue adamite with zincolivenite: https://www.mindat.org/photo-509045.html
1wRe: POTD - all adamite ?Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Education.The blue may be zincolivenite, maybe no adamite here at all? Beautiful picture though!
1wRe: Diamond meteorite impactReply from Ralph S Bottrill in Meteorites.The photo is poor and no scale, but no sign of diamonds- probably a coarse quartz sandstone or fine conglomerate.
1wRe: MinID bulk creation?Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Improving Mindat.org.For a specimen to have a minID it would need recording in Mindat so that iD doesn’t get used by a different specimen. Probably the biggest issue would be ensuring the location for each specimen fits exactly into our location database, and this will take somebody a lot of time. The next issue is ...
1wRe: Graphics example (shown for plants) we could adapt for our mineral ID intro contentReply from Ralph S Bottrill in Improving Mindat.org.Excellent idea! We gets lots of submitted photos we can use as examples! One thing they didn’t show is a blurry dark blob in front of a nicely focussed garden! Also a photo saying this rock may contain mineral X but it’s not visible in the photo, or a photo showing six minerals, but only ...
1wRe: MinID bulk creation?Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Improving Mindat.org.I am sure it could be done by Jolyon or David, but would require some time and effort, and unless the collection has a lot of rare and unusual species and locations with analytical confirmation, making up for the lack of photos, we would probably question the benefit of this to the Mindat community?
1wRe: found in The NetherlandsReply from Ralph S Bottrill in Identity Help.So it’s a silicified shell deposit, could be labelled silcrete and the rocktype and location could be added to Mindat.
1wRe: Olmiite versus PoldervaartiteReply from Ralph S Bottrill in Improving Mindat.org.Was this question ever resolved?
1wRe: Blue Beryl (Maxixe)Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Minerals.Possibly meant to refer to the beryl page, which has a little section on chromophores, but sadly without any links to any references. The maxixe page doesn’t have a single reference either.
1wRe: etched sphalerite from dalnegorsk; how did they form?Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Field Collecting.The holes could be formed by acid solution of more soluble minerals, maybe stalactitic calcite?
1wRe: found in The NetherlandsReply from Ralph S Bottrill in Identity Help.It looks like a shaped artefact - an axe head? Rather worn.Other than that it looks like a silicified limestone rich in coral and shells.
1wRe: Photo for deletionReply from Ralph S Bottrill in Photos.We are not meant to replace photos with something totally different, it can scramble the database. Best to just make it user-only.
1wRe: berthierine page needs some workReply from Ralph S Bottrill in Improving Mindat.org.Thanks HerwigI added the references and amended the descriptive text. I don't know if there is a crystal structure available for loading.The crystallographic data is fixed for the monoclinic polytype.
1wRe: What does the ? behind the Rhodonite, mean.Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Education.Rolf, the old names like garnet, tourmaline, feldspar, apatite etc are still perfectly acceptable if you haven't analysed everything in great detail, we just sometimes seem a bit nit-picking with trying to find precise names. Nature is usually analogue rather than digital, so not everything fits in ...
1wRe: Mindat response very slow and sometimes timeoutReply from Ralph S Bottrill in General.Having big timeout problems again today
6hClear Creek Canyon, Goat Mountain, San Benito County, California, USAPosted by Ralph S Bottrill in Localities.Does anyone have more information confirming the identity of the minerals at this locality? Most just come with broken links to what looks like a dealers site (mikon) or to a photo or personal communication, with no indication if or how they were confirmed. The mountkeithite is a strange colour for ...
2wRe: Mistaken identity... specimen from Cuasso al Monte, ItalyReply from Ralph S Bottrill in Photos.I would guess that the yellowish mineral in the circled area is a ferroan dolomite, and the squarish white crystals below are probably bertrandite?
2wRe: What does the ? behind the Rhodonite, mean.Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Education.I agree with the above suggestions.
2wRe: I bought it online. Vendor didn't say where specifically from just that the main producing areas were USA, SpainReply from Ralph S Bottrill in Identity Help.It’s doubtful there is any sphalerite there. As a guess it looks like quartz-infilled cavities in a reddish, highly leached limestone, but you would need to do some acid and or hardness tests. It’s cut and polished of course.
2wRe: What does the ? behind the Rhodonite, mean.Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Education.Uwe, there were two problems with this renaming argument. Firstly the statement “... the first reliable chemical analyses of rhodonite belong mainly to samples with 0.5 < Ca < 1.5 apfu ...” indicates that the name really was used for two different minerals, i.e., ...
2wRe: Relative Chemical Reactivity of Silica PolymorphsReply from Ralph S Bottrill in General.Good point Dalibor, with AAR in concrete they add amorphous silica as it reacts more rapidly and prevents the slow reaction in stressed quartz in quartzite and chests etc.
2wRe: Cave PhotoReply from Ralph S Bottrill in General.Ha Ha Frank!
2wRe: What does the ? behind the Rhodonite, mean.Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Education.It is surprising that nobody has yes looked at the cation ordering in fowlerite, it must be a strong contender for a new species! Rhodonite can also contain substantial Mg, so that’s also a possibility for another new species. Then there is dyssnite, supposedly a rhodonite variety containing ...
2wRe: What does the ? behind the Rhodonite, mean.Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Education.Spinel is a classic problem - geologists and petrologists tend to use the name for any mineral in that group, leaving you wondering what it actually is.
2wRe: Axinite - is the color any indication for Fe or Mn dominancy ?Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Education.From my experience it doesn’t work sometimes at least. We get all three at the Avebury mine but the colours and analyses don’t match well.
2wRe: What does the ? behind the Rhodonite, mean.Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Education.Yes and rhodonite-(MnFe), leaving rhodonite as a group name, but the IMA never seem to realise the confusion we get when they approve the reuse of an old name for a new composition.
2wRe: Crystallography: The Monoclinic SystemReply from Ralph S Bottrill to an article.These pages are generally pretty good but there are a few typos, errors, bad links etc, is it ok if we fix them?Edit: I fixed a couple typos and bad links. I did not check all links as the system seems very slow currently.
2wRe: Mica Schist with Rounded Xls?Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Identity Help.Chlorite can replace cordierite, chloritoid and garnet, so not highly useful in determining the original porphyroblasts. A polished thin section may reveal relics of the original mineral, which can be confirmed by probe analysis.
2wRe: Question about Allophane and ChrysocollaReply from Ralph S Bottrill in General.XRD is not so useful on amorphous material like these, you need some chemistry like EDS. It would be especially interesting to know the copper content of these samples.
2w⚠18 imagesRe: ID Help - Blue Ridge Ophiolite(?) from North Carolina?Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Identity Help.It’s very hard to identify a rock definitively without a thin section, chemistry etc but I would suggest something like a weathered dioritic rock with sedimentary xenoliths. Not something that easily it’s an ophiolite setting.
2wRe: What does the ? behind the Rhodonite, mean.Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Education.Yes in newer machines it seems easier to set the discrimination without monochromators.
2wRe: More rudists?Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Identity Help.Looks like bivalves to me but uncertain about rudists or more detailed classification, you would probably need a fossil expert to take a look in person.
2wRe: What does the ? behind the Rhodonite, mean.Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Education.Very true Dalibor, I was just thinking the same! We run our XRDs with a monochromator which removes these problems.
2wRe: Cave PhotoReply from Ralph S Bottrill in General.Good point Dalibor, although hematite sometimes turns up in soils etc. I thought ferrihydrite was more orange, but lepidocrocite is another possibility also.
2wRe: Manganese NodulesReply from Ralph S Bottrill in General.Hi DaliborI think your description of manganolite is fairly consistent with our main usage in Mindat, but I think specifying the clay and coarser clastic mineral contents may prove difficult. Until we can find the original description or a formal redefinition it may be best to use it for any ...
2wRe: What does the ? behind the Rhodonite, mean.Reply from Ralph S Bottrill in Education.Good questions Greg & Herwig.I have analysed a few specimens from Woods mine, along with various other minerals, and all the "rhodonite" turned out to have insufficient Ca to be what we now call rhodonite. Its very unfortunate that rhodonite was renamed to a mineral different to the ...
2wRe: Manganese NodulesReply from Ralph S Bottrill in General.The main trouble with the term manganolite is that it seems to be used very commonly as a synonym for rhodonite, especially in mystic and lapidary circles, despite it not being listed in Mindat. Its referenced in Mohsen Manutchehr-Danai (2000) Dictionary of Gems and Gemology. Springer. ...
