Atacamite

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Named for its occurrence in the Atacama Desert of Chile, this solid nodule features chatoyant, dark greenish-black, bladed crystals and rosettes of atacamite, to 1.0 cm in length. While not rare per se, crystallized atacamite is almost never found in specimens this large and rich, especially making up the bulk of this piece. Most modern specimens occur as flat-laying crystals on rock. This is a solid "boulder" of the mineral with fat crystal spraying on every side! Ex Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, probably from the early 1900s.