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Mineralogical ClassificationDump grown minerals

22nd Mar 2016 15:30 UTCReiner Mielke Expert

I know that post mining minerals are considered valid minerals but how about those that formed after the rock was taken from the dump? Yesterday I was cleaning up under a spruce tree in my yard and buried in the old decayed needles I found an 8cm rock that was all covered in a thick ( 1-2mm) greenish white crust. I thought it was unusually heavy and broke it open to discover it was a lump of almost pure cyrtolite zircon that I had thrown away about 5 years ago and had forgotten about. Would any minerals that had formed on it be considered valid minerals? At this point I have no idea what the crust is and am thinking that maybe I should get it analyzed?

22nd Mar 2016 15:36 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Post mining minerals aren't necessarily considered valid minerals. It's a grey area.

22nd Mar 2016 18:47 UTCRonald J. Pellar Expert

:-DLook up the definition of a mineral. As far as I know as long as it isn't man-made it is a valid mineral. Technically even man-made minerals are valid as long as they meet the definition of "mineral" whatever that is? :-D

22nd Mar 2016 19:00 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

It depends upon how much intervention there is. If you added a bag of fertilizer on top of it, any nitrates formed, they wouldn't be considered a mineral.

22nd Mar 2016 19:44 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

> It depends upon how much intervention there is

Except this is not defined anywhere :)

22nd Mar 2016 19:48 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Also... whether something gets approved as a mineral or not depends how much attention people were paying at the time when the material was analysed and approved.

For example, this was obviously a last-thing-on-a-Friday-afternoon approval by the IMA:

http://www.mindat.org/min-7371.html

22nd Mar 2016 20:12 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

"Except this is not defined anywhere" - yes it has been.

http://rruff.info/doclib/cm/vol33/CM33_689.pdf

Chemical compounds formed by the action of geological processes on anthropogenic substances have on

occasion, been accepted as minerals (e.g., the Laurium "minerals" formed by the reaction of seawater with ancient

metallurgical slags). However, in the modem era when many exotic materials are produced the possibility arises

that such substances can be placed in a geological environment to produce reaction products that might otherwise

qualify as new minerals. The CNMMN has therefore ruled that, in future, chemical compounds formed by the

action of geological processes on anthropogenic substances cannot be considered as minerals.

Some chemical compounds formed by the action of geological processes on rocks or minerals that have been

exposed to such processes by activities of Man (i.e., mine openings, ore dumps, road cuts, etc.) have

been accepted as minerals in the past and, if the exposure was inadvertent i.e.,not done with the express purpose

of creating new minerals, then such products can be accepted as minerals. Chemical compounds caused by mine

fires are considered to be a special case, as it is not always clear whether there has been human involvement in

initiating the fue, and such substances are therefore not accepted as minerals

22nd Mar 2016 21:26 UTCReiner Mielke Expert

Sounds to me like my "mineral" would be considered a mineral since the only thing that man did was transport it. Any reactions that took place between the spruce needles and the mineral was totally natural. No wait does the interaction between a pet and a rock disqualify it? My cats on occassion have been known to pee under the spruce tree but I have no idea if the mineral in question was exposed to that.

22nd Mar 2016 21:48 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

If only there was a better way to classify such things :)

22nd Mar 2016 22:12 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

Better first find out what the substance is, and exactly how it might have formed, before further discussion.

22nd Mar 2016 22:14 UTCReiner Mielke Expert

Hello Alfredo,

I will do that and let you know what I find. I will also post some pictures shortly.

22nd Mar 2016 22:55 UTCRobert Land

Reiner, I can't resist commenting on this one for you. I know how you love your radioactives, such as uraninite . You've been searching all over the province, and now all over the world for a new mineral species, and you found it in your own back yard! Here's a good name for your new species. "Urin"anite. Thank your cats!

Rob.

22nd Mar 2016 22:57 UTCReiner Mielke Expert

I think "new mineral" is a bit premature I don't even know if it is a mineral yet could just be a mineraloid.

22nd Mar 2016 23:09 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

Break a tiny chip of the crust off and see whether a) it burns; b) how it is affected by NaOH or bleach. I'm thinking it might be an organic growth. Cyrtolite is pretty stable chemically, so I'd be surprised if it had reacted with anything in your soil. You wouldn't be the first person to confuse lichens, dried bacterial scum and insect eggs for minerals - I've done it myself :-(

One other possibility that comes to mind is that some coloring matter was bleached out in the surface layer, rather than a new mineral having been added.

22nd Mar 2016 23:20 UTCReiner Mielke Expert

Sorry for the false alarm but on looking more closely at it, it came back to me that I had once tried cleaning a cyrtolite zircon with hydrofluoric acid and it turned the whole thing pink and partly dissolved it. This made it more reactive and thus the thick crust formed. Therefore this cannot be considered natural and is disqualified. Damn! :-(

Note never try cleaning Cyrtolite zircon with hydrofluoric acid.

22nd Mar 2016 23:35 UTCReiner Mielke Expert

Anyway here is a picture of it broken through.

22nd Mar 2016 23:48 UTCPavel Kartashov Manager

Jolyon & Katya Ralph Wrote:

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

> Post mining minerals aren't necessarily considered

> valid minerals. It's a grey area.

So these chalcanthite http://www.mindat.org/photo-484302.html and brochantite http://www.mindat.org/photo-484305.html , http://www.mindat.org/photo-483361.html growing right now here http://www.mindat.org/photo-483359.html aren't valid minerals? And of course bonattiite in which this chalcantite was transformed in my case is invalid.

What about cyrtolite, it able to be ethed even in 1/2 diluted HCl.

23rd Mar 2016 00:17 UTCD Mike Reinke

Interesting thread.

If merely leaving something on/in the ground generated new minerals, the weathering of rock exposed in a land slide would do the same thing; It is all just weathering, right? Since the HF was thrown in the mix by a human hand, that changes everything. Now if cyrtolite zircon was exposed in a landslide, and then assaulted by conveniently nearby volcanic fumes, you might have a new mineral? Only not very much of it. Just musing...

Still, according to David's reference, the back yard product is an "equivalent." That sounds reasonable.

23rd Mar 2016 00:40 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

What is interesting is this:

If I go into a mine and take a piece of rock out, and leave it on the surface deliberately to weather into secondary "minerals" - these are NOT minerals.

But if I was a miner, and I'd been digging rock out of the ground and accidentally left something on the surface - then these ARE minerals.

To me this is a little strange. It's like saying that an animal bred in captivity isn't an animal because humans deliberately bred it.

Is there any other natural science where the intent of a person is a deciding factor in whether something is classified one way or another?

23rd Mar 2016 00:56 UTCReiner Mielke Expert

Yes that is strange Jolyon, difficult to understand why intent should have anything to do with it. Seems to me this is really just an arbitrary subdivision of chemistry that one can subscribe to or not. It reminds me of the gemologists distinction between cut synthetic and cut natural gems. A cut synthetic ruby is as much a ruby as a natural one but the natural one is valued more. I can't really understand that.

23rd Mar 2016 01:09 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

But what if a human moves a mineral from one environment to another, and thereby creates a mineral that would've been impossible to form in its original environment? I often visit volcanic fumaroles where H2SO4, HCl, and even HF gases are being released. If I bring some natural minerals like Li/Mn/Be-phosphates from a pegmatite (or even Reiner's cyrtolite) and dump them into the natural fumarole, I guarantee you some weird "minerals(?)" would be produced after a few weeks. This would never happen by itself in Nature! So just because the peg minerals were natural and the fumarole was natural, does that make the reaction products "natural minerals"? Of course not. But as Jolyon has stated before, the planet cannot be easily divided into "natural" and "synthetic" - there is an ever-widening grey area inbetween, and those who insist on squeezing everything into one or other side of the simple dichotomy are going to get increasingly frustrated.

23rd Mar 2016 01:09 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

"A cut synthetic ruby is as much a ruby as a natural one but the natural one is valued more. I can't really understand that." - rarity. Good natural rubies are much rarer than lab grown ones.

23rd Mar 2016 01:32 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

"Is there any other natural science where the intent of a person is a deciding factor in whether something is classified one way or another?"

Physics:

Depending upon how you look at things, photons and electrons can be considered to either be a wave or a particle.

23rd Mar 2016 01:58 UTCReiner Mielke Expert

"A cut synthetic ruby is as much a ruby as a natural one but the natural one is valued more. I can't really understand that." - rarity. Good natural rubies are much rarer than lab grown ones." Yes but that goes against the purpose of cutting a stone which is to produce a pretty stone. That is why I specifically said cut. A cut natural ruby is in fact usually less pretty than a cut synthetic ruby ( less flaws) so if the value is in the natural aspect why cut it? As far as I can determine the distinction, as far as cut stones are concerned, is purely psychological.

23rd Mar 2016 02:25 UTCJeff Weissman Expert

I now reinterpret the title of this topic as "dump" grown minerals :-D

23rd Mar 2016 02:32 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

Jeff, can we keep them if they're still juveniles? :-D

23rd Mar 2016 02:35 UTCJeff Weissman Expert

Freddie, what you do with your kids is your business ;-)

23rd Mar 2016 02:41 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

> So just because the peg minerals were natural and the fumarole was natural, does that make the reaction products "natural minerals"?

Well, the crystals that are formed form due to natural processes, they're not carved from an amorphous block by man.

The issue here is not necessarily about intent to create fake minerals or not, but whether the environment that is created by intervention of man (deliberate or otherwise) replicates a natural process that is likely to have happened to the source material given enough time anyway - ie if the vein had eventually reached the surface through erosion. One could argue that a piece of the vein could somehow naturally get transported to a fumarole in Japan, but it's unlikely. (perhaps if two swallows were able to grasp it between them and carry it...)

So. coming back to the example, if I took a piece of ore out of the mine and left it on top of the spoil heap so that it can form nice secondary crystals that's every bit as much of a mineral as the piece just next to it that found its way there by accident - at least in my mind.

23rd Mar 2016 02:53 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

Mineral shows often exhibit pretty gypsum groups from acid mine water drainage. Indubitably the unintentional byproduct of human intervention in Nature. Sometimes they are sold growing on an old shoe or some animal skull. Did the shoe fall into the pond accidentally? Did the critter lose his head in the pool accidentally?

"Intent" should not be one of the considerations, as it is too often impossible to determine. We might then have to hold court cases and cross-examine witnesses to decide whether a crystal was a "mineral" or not? ...and still not know for sure. Absurd, so intent must be excluded from the classification, and the divisions in the classification must stand or fall on their level of "naturalness"/interventions regardless of the mental processes of the humans involved..

23rd Mar 2016 15:57 UTCPeter Cristofono

As far as other natural sciences are concerned - In botany, there is a distinction maintained in botanical nomenclature between "wild" plant species or varieties, and those that have their origin via human intervention, whether the intervention is intentional or not.

For example, if plants hybridize in a man-made garden, even if accidentally, the resulting cultivar is not considered a natural variety, even if it subsequently escapes into the wild and becomes established in "nature." The botanical name would still reflect its man-made origin.

In botany, a useful distinction is made between species/varieties that have a "natural" vs. "human-influenced" origin and it seems to me that it makes sense to maintain that distinction in mineralogy as well.

23rd Mar 2016 17:00 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

American Birding Association

The ABA Checklist includes ABA-area breeding species, regular visitors, and casual and accidental species from other regions that are believed to have strayed here without direct human aid, and well-established introduced species that are now part of our avifauna. Species Total: 988

23rd Mar 2016 18:09 UTCRonald J. Pellar Expert

It all boils down to the definition of "mineral". Is it a physical, chemical, and/or crystallographic attributes that determine the difference between a man-made substance or a natural substance? In the Gem world synthetic or natural are considered different "varieties(?)", but the same chemically and crystallographically (same "minteral") and synthetic refers to "synthesis" by man without any mention of intent. I personally do not approve of the inclusion of intent into any definition of what a mineral is or is not. The definition of a mineral should be definitive and measurable, IMHO. Oh well, this is getting to be an debate about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin! :-D

23rd Mar 2016 20:40 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Here is something thrown into the mix of this very interesting thread.

On mindat there are a number of acanthite photos of the thin, elongated, platy crystals. In my collection I have often collected, broken up and mounted in perky boxes, silver and lead related minerals with silver content. After a few years of reexamining the specimens I have found the exact same acanthite bloom growing on underlying metallic minerals. This growth is definitely post mine since it was not there when I broke the specimen and put in into a box. It formed from the exposure to air and moisture in the air. I am sure this forms in the exact same way naturally in the host rock when earth movement takes place, fracturing the rock. Mine grew in the box. Same mineral, same process but I have seen this often and on my photos I state whether it was post mine or not, that may be the best way to identify these growths. I have wondered in the photos of acanthite with no such explanation if they were found this way or grew after they were mined?

Rolf Luetcke

24th Mar 2016 13:28 UTCDavid K. Joyce Expert

People can collect what they want. I have very little interest in post mining growths of "minerals". Someone else might be fascinated by such growths and have a collection or sub collection of them. That is OK! When I'm at a mineral show, I walk past the artificial crystals of bismuth and zincite no matter how spectacular they are. I have no interest. Others do."to each his own"

I think that it is useful to know what post mining mineral/crystal growths exist at any particular mine or occurrence, if for no other reason, so that we know they exist and so that we don't mix them up with the minerals that actually resulted from the natural geological processes that were not influenced by the hand of man.

David KJ

24th Mar 2016 18:18 UTCRonald J. Pellar Expert

To paraphrase (badly?) "A mineral by any other name is a mineral". :-D

15th Apr 2016 09:48 UTCishwar mining

Why not is it valid? it may differs in some case, but still cant be denied being a mineral.

15th Apr 2016 18:34 UTCRob Woodside 🌟 Manager

Ritika, I'm not sure what you want to be valid, but a mineral is what the IMA says is a mineral. They have some guidelines which they try to follow.

6th May 2016 20:50 UTCŁukasz Kruszewski Expert

I'm in complete agreement with Jolyon and Reiner. This is an old story with IMA putting dump-minerals into... dump. But not in all cases - see ammoniomagnesiovoltaite - this new mineral comes from a burning dump, indeed. And how about all the minerals forming in galleries in mines? Would these myriads of species be able to appear if there was no mining activity (human-provided (rain)water infliltration, human-provided better oxygenation, ....)? Eurekadumpite is here an extraordinary example, I think. I understand that IMA has a hard job to decide wheter this or that phase is a mineral or not, but maybe its time to consider this comparison of mine-minerals and burning-dump minerals?

6th May 2016 20:57 UTCŁukasz Kruszewski Expert

To be sure I'm kinda "advocate" of the poor burning dump minerals as I work with these, but I think there is a difference between a phase formed, e.g., from burnt TV kinescope interacting with acid sulfate solutions - let it be yttrium sulfate ;-) - and calcite reacting with silicate melt formed due to spontaneous coal fire in a dump. OK, this coal wouldn't likely ignite if not human-made dump. But this is exactly the same as with a secondary phase on mine galleries: no human-made mine - no adequate oxygen amount - (likely) no secondary alteration - no mineral.

7th May 2016 01:52 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

The IMA does not have its own "police investigation unit" to visit localities and determine their natural origin. They depend entirely on the honesty of authors who submit new species for consideration. When the authors "neglect" to mention that a type specimen came from a burning dump or an old slag pile, it can end up being accepted. This is one of the reasons I've advocated years ago that submissions should be open to public scrutiny for 6 months before the IMA committee holds its voting. Then before the vote they might receive some comment about a mineral not being natural. That would be more scientifically sound than the current secrecy.

Currently, if a mineral is accepted "under false pretenses", the only way to get it off the list again is to go through the cumbersome discreditation procedure, which few academics will bother doing - It's time-consuming and there is not much academic glory to be gotten. So those systematik collectors who worship the list remain forever with silly non-minerals on their ever-lengthening want lists.

7th May 2016 15:15 UTCŁukasz Kruszewski Expert

I'm not sure about the proposal submission, but the info on dump genesis of NH4-Mg-voltaite appears in the abstract of the original description. Maybe there was a confirmation that this site indeed had a spontaneous combustion and not a match or sth... but even coming to such a site wouldn't give a clue of the origin of the mineral-forming process, I think. It is difficult to impossible to prove a dump fire to be 100% natural. Nevertheless, I still think this is a matter of a particular case. Let's consider an information on "natural occurence" of lead polonide (as told by wikipedia). As long as the parental polonium is made artificially, the source of PbPo is articificial. On the other hand, the formation of PbPo itself due to radioative decay is natural, without human purpose or action. But man-made polonium wouldn't rather be present in the natural environment without human action. So is for any dump. And any mine. My thinking is, if there is a mineral forming in a man-made mine, then what is the difference from one forming in a (burning) dump? Well, I think the difference is that it is impossible to prove, for 100%, that the fire was of natural cause. A sad information for new minerals from such dump ;-)

8th May 2016 01:23 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

I suppose most coal dump fires are due to spontaneous combustion, a well-studied phenomenon, so the fire is in some sense "natural", but that fact doesn't make the minerals created therein natural. The dump itself is an environment created by humans, an environment that does not exist naturally. Humans have dug material out from various strata underground, brought them to the surface, exposed them to oxygen and rain, mixed them up with all sorts of industrial trash and waste materials... Not a natural environment even when the fire started by itself. So I fully agree with the IMA that burning coal dump minerals are more anthropomorphic than natural.

But I don't disparage them; in fact I personally find them to be highly interesting and desirable. This "mineraloid", for example: http://www.mindat.org/photo-745768.html - is the most beautiful and interesting I've seen so far this year! But it's a "mineraloid", not a natural mineral.

8th May 2016 17:04 UTCŁukasz Kruszewski Expert

Whoa, thanks for the link! Indeed, interesting. Regarding the dumps - of course, I agree, its an anthropogenic environment. But so is any mine ;-)

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