WARIKAHNITE with Leiteite

Unknown Owner

Help improve this recordNo owner is registered for this specimen yet. If it's yours or you know more about it, you can add the owner, provenance, publications and other details.

This great toenail-sized specimen features two of the all-time rarities for which Tsumeb mine is so famed and has potential for more too. Not only that, but they are attached to matrix - a dark grey sulphide/sulpharsenide. Most prominent is a crystallized aggregate (1.7 x 1.4 cm in area) of sectile pearlescent white Leiteite, an extremely rare zinc arsenate described from Tsumeb mine as a new species in the late 1970s, and this remains the only known natural occurrence. To have a lovely specimen of Leitite with the context of surrounding matrix is fine enough, but to have the association with an even rarer Type Species from Tsumeb - Warikahnite - is even more exceptional. It forms 1 to 2 mm scale orange patches embedded within the edges of the Leitite, but there are unidentified areas of a similar sized blue phase that could prove to be another rarity. Ex Weyand Collection.