Analcime with Stilbite-Ca and Natrolite

Unknown Owner

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This is an extremely rare locality piece from the construction of the Skookumchuck Dam in Thurston County, Washington, USA in 1969-1971. Collecting at the site was heavily constrained to just a few individuals including the site geologist but thankfully they managed to preserve some of the remarkable zeolites that were encountered in some occasionally very large cavities in the Eocene age olivine basalt flows exposed during blasting. This large miniature specimen was acquired by British collector David Hardman at about the time of their discovery and has only recently become available for the first time in over 50 years. It features two main colourless rounded Analcime crystals - the larger reaching 3 cm across - surrounded on one side with small pale salmon-pink Stilbite-Ca crystals. Extremely unusual material which was only found in one short period of time half a century ago.