Name: MERENSKYITE with VIOLARITE and Pentlandite Polished Section
Brand: Crystal Classics
Price: 350 USD
Availability: InStock

Updated 4d ago

MERENSKYITE with VIOLARITE and Pentlandite Polished Section

The Lukkulaisvaara ultrabasic Massif in the Republic of Karelia, Russia is rich in Platinum Group Elements (PGEs), gold, and copper-nickel sulphides. This polished block/mount contains PGEs, including Merenskyite and an unknown palladium tellurium bismuth phase, along with Pentlandite, Chalcopyrite, Violarite and 'silicates'. They are within a 14 x 13 x 12 mm triangular grain of 'ore' mounted in a 24 mm diameter resin polished block. This style of polished mount requires a specialist reflected light microscope in order to study the grains and the reflectance produced by these metallic minerals under plane polarized and cross polarized light. Often, even optical identification is a challenge and the carbon coating on the edge of this polished block shows that it has been studied chemically using a Scanning Electron Microscope. This is not our usual type of specimen, but included due to its rarity. Examples of these rare species from this occurrence are few and far between. It comes from a well-known rare species collection in Austria prior to which it was owned by Dr Hans-Jurgen Wilke (1925-2014) whose record card notes that it was obtained in 1995 from Dr. Mikhail Murashko in St. Petersburg, Russia and was previously owned by "Prof. Rudashevskii" who is probably N.S. Rudashevskii who was second author on a paper describing Tolovkite as a new species. The overall measurements provided indicate the size of the polished block.

$350.00