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GeneralLocalities with most essential elements

19th Apr 2018 17:45 UTCJeff Weissman Expert

Of the 115 known chemical elements, 71 are essential to approved mineral species. (I'm not counting Ra, Pr, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm or Lu).

The Clara Mine lists 47 elements, or 66% of all essential elements known to be in minerals. Poudrette Quarry also seems to have 47, if I counted correctly. (Franklin Mining District has 44, Khibiny Massif has 47, but this consists of multiple localities)

Are there any other localities with even more essential elements?

19th Apr 2018 18:20 UTCNick Gilly

Ytterby?

19th Apr 2018 22:59 UTCRalph S Bottrill 🌟 Manager

Ytterby only has 31. Tsumeb and Broken Hill both have 44. Palabora 39.

20th Apr 2018 08:01 UTCClosed Account 🌟

Lavrion Mining District has 50, but that is also multiple localities.

20th Apr 2018 09:09 UTCLukáš Křesina

Poudrette Quarry, Mont Saint Hilaire 47, and I think this is really the only locality.

But as Branko Rieck writes, the problem is what is locality and what area with more localities.

Jáchymov, Czech republic has 43 (and it will increase). But is this the only locality? And what about Příbram, Czech republic - 44? And Khibiny massif 47, Lovozero massif 44? If similar massif would be in China and no sublocalities would be listed, for all mineralogists it would be the only locality.

Lukáš Křesina

20th Apr 2018 09:48 UTCJohan Kjellman Expert

How are these elements selected - I suppose some algoritm?

I looked at Ytterby - 31 sounded low - several REE's are not listed also not Mn, Hf and Th.

I count 43 elements. If by 'essential element' is meant constituent of a formula several minor elements will of course drop off the list.

I cannot see the element list on Poudrette, found it on Ytterby - maybe because of my old browser

cheers

20th Apr 2018 11:52 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

Johan, I see the element list for Poudrette, 47 elements, right at the top of the mineral species list.

20th Apr 2018 12:01 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

You need to be comparing areas of similar size. You can't compare a single mine with an entire massif, that's not fair :)

20th Apr 2018 13:34 UTCAlfred L. Ostrander

Jolyon has a point but what is more important, a single mine or quarry or the geologic formation?

20th Apr 2018 14:17 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

What Lukáš and Jolyon said about comparing mineral statistics from localities of wildly disparate sizes is what makes any such comparisons of dubious value. I've been saying the same thing for years about the concept of "type locality". At least two people I know are trying to rank localities by richness of their "type" locality species, again with the problem of locality sizes varying by a few orders of magnitude, which makes neither geological nor statistical sense.

If the Lovozero Massif covers hundreds of square km and has 106 type species, the Chuquicamata mine covers a few square km and has 19 type species, the El Dragon mine in Bolivia has 6 type species but worked just a single veinlet only 4cm wide, and the Khatyrka meteorite yielded 8 new species from a single teaspoonful of material, which is the mineralogically richest "locality"? Similar comparisons could be made when comparing "localities" by number of essential elements.

I like Alfred's point about geological formations. Let's define things by their geology/petrology - One rock type in one Formation = one locality, whether that's a 4cm selenide vein in the El Dragon mine, or a 500 square km basalt flow in the Deccan Traps. (I can't quite decide whether I'm being serious or facetious here - I think a bit of both, so will have to ponder some more.)

20th Apr 2018 14:29 UTCJohan Kjellman Expert

Alfredo Petrov Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Johan, I see the element list for Poudrette, 47

> elements, right at the top of the mineral species

> list.

yes that's how i see it on Ytterby but strangely not on Poudrette

20th Apr 2018 15:56 UTCMatt Courville

If the Lovozero Massif covers hundreds of square km and has 106 type species, the Chuquicamata mine covers a few square km and has 19 type species, the El Dragon mine in Bolivia has 6 type species but worked just a single veinlet only 4cm wide, and the Khatyrka meteorite yielded 8 new species from a single teaspoonful of material, which is the mineralogically richest "locality"? Similar comparisons could be made when comparing "localities" by number of essential elements.

Very interesting....hmm

From a purely logistical point of view (more or less my personal experience)perhaps:

Locality Elements = field collected on foot per collecting day

Therefore if you can walk to a sub-section of a quarry, 2nd mine cut/adit/dumpings/ test pits, etc., it could all count. If one would require traveling back in a vehicle along a public non-site road it wouldn't count. Internal quarry roads would be part of any site.

This would be the largest site which I have visited that could be included into such a system despite it's quite small list ;)

https://www.mindat.org/loc-144736.html

21st Apr 2018 05:45 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

Matt, one of the factors that make this kind of comparison so fuzzy, apart from the disparity in geographical area, is the variability in amount of research done on a locality. Most Mindat localities have been only perfunctorily studied and the species lists are very incomplete. A few localities have been studied in exhaustive detail, like the Clara mine in Germany, where even the most minute crumbs have been described including dozens of exceedingly rare microscopic bits that even collectors who are Clara locality specialists will never see in their lifetimes. We can only dream about having many of the world's localities studied in such minute detail. Your Adirondack locality's element list would undoubtedly get quite a bit longer if microscopic clay particles and such like were IDed - i'm sure you could add F, K, Mg, Mn right away ;))

21st Apr 2018 16:40 UTCMatt Courville

I never considered just how complex this could be. I've recently discovered in my area of collecting here in Ontario that even Ann Sabina's guides are often very incomplete or wrong at times. Rumor has it that many of the far less experienced students did the work of going into the difficult sites, and therefore the level of skills varied quite a bit.

Often the trouble for me is that I only have one example which is usually embedded into matrix. With my resources it becomes a choice of destroy out of curiosity or keep as a collector piece. After this thread I'm thinking of species-collecting a particular site over the next few years by hand/analysis. If more people tried this one site at a time, I could just imagine how much more could be revealed.

This could also be a fun challenge for mindat itself - sponsor a site and be one to collect/identify every last mineral ;)

22nd Apr 2018 00:32 UTCKeith Compton 🌟 Manager

Matt

You don't need a reason to sponsor a page but I do like your challenge.

How often do you see a locality entered into Mindat with just one mineral listed for the locality and with a single photo. That photo alone generally has several minerals clearly visible on the matrix and yet those species are still not listed for the locality. The identity of the matrix should always be added, particularly as we now have "rocks" in the data base. Their inclusion adds to, and makes our data more complete. Admittedly it is not always possible to visually accurately identify the matrix and related minerals but many are clear.

There are many "new" minerals that have been "discovered" from specimens that have been in museums and collections for years and that had not been identified in the field.

We probably should all have a "greater" look at our own specimens and update accordingly. I know, in my own case it would take me ages, to document all minerals on specimens that I have from any particular locality, but I think I'd like the challenge. Just need to find more time in the day.

22nd Apr 2018 00:35 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Following on from Matt's suggestion, how about a new challenge.

Who here on mindat has, in their collection every single species listed from a specific locality?

And out of everyone who answers this, who has everything from a locality with the most minerals?

22nd Apr 2018 03:32 UTCRalph S Bottrill 🌟 Manager

We see a lot of minerals listed in photo captions but not in the list for the locality. Its always a big judgement call whether we add the mineral based on a photo, its not always obvious if the ID is correct, or the locality given; it would be better to have a real reference, though admittedly these can be lacking in analytical data or other ID details also.

We may need a minimum number to be interesting (30?); many deposits list nothing! And I have been to eg. a number of limestone deposts where nothing was listed but calcite, and I saw and collected nothing else. Though Im sure if you tried hard you could find some quartz, clays, etc. And do we include rocktypes?

And rather than just provide an unverified list the real challenge may be to upload a recognisable photo of each mineral found!

22nd Apr 2018 16:24 UTCTomas Husdal Expert

The element list above the mineral list isn't always correct. It includes not only species-defining elements but all elements listen in the mineral formulae (the mindat formulae I guess). For instance Poudrette Quarry: 47 elements including Nd but no Nd-mineral listed. Fergusonite-(Ce) turns up as the mineral supposed to contain Nd.

By the way: the same problem appears in the "Chemical search". A search for valid minerals containing essential Dy returns both lepersonnite-(Gd), lokkaite-(Y) and paraniite-(Y), the latter doesn't even have Dy listed in the formula. (I also get "yftisite-(Y)" although it's not valid...)

28th Apr 2018 21:35 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager

"... paraniite-(Y), the latter doesn't even have Dy listed in the formula."

"IMA Formula: (Ca,Y,Dy)2Y(WO4)2AsO4" (the current Mindat formula is simplified).

30th Apr 2018 11:16 UTCTomas Husdal Expert

OK, so the search is based on both the Mindat formula and the IMA formula then.

Still: my main point was that the "Essential elements only" isn't doing a good job.

30th Jul 2018 00:11 UTCVandall Thomas King Manager

The Franklin Mining District is dinky compared to the behemoths it is being compared to. Only 2 km long with one sheared Zn ore deposit and its contact rocks.

30th Jul 2018 00:20 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Tomas,

The bug has been fixed!

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