It is time to announce the latest 10,000 minerals have been added to the e-Rocks database, this time it is an all American honour - or should I say honor?
Michael Cline of Uravan Minerals (USA) brought up item 660000 earlier today with his listing of a specimen of coalingite from New Idria District, San Benito County, California.
Coalingite was named in 1965 after the town of Coalinga, Fresno County in central California, close to the Type locality of New Idria, a source of serpentinite minerals.
Coalingite is a hydrated magnesium iron(III) hydroxyl carbonate with the formula Mg10Fe3+2(OH)24[CO3] · 2H2O, its origins are said to be from the alteration of iron rich brucite (Mg(OH)2).
Coalingite is a member of the hydrotalcite supergroup, although it and brugnatellite are not in any specific group both are reported to be hexagonal crystal system. (RRUFF XRD).
As might be expected coalingite is soft, and seen as irregular not well crystallised red-brown masses.
By location coalingite is comparatively uncommon having been recorded at around 25 localities wordwide.
Our latest lot of 10,000 minerals were added to the database in 63 days, slightly slower than the previous lot but still an impressive input rate of 159 mineral specimens per day.
We look forward to seeing what goodies and surprises come along in the next 10,000 items.
Footnote - A good time to drop in a small bit of site news - in the Mineral Item page we have added a search feature "See Sellers Other Items".
See below:
