While I was at the 2006 Tucson gem show I was proud to have found this little 2″ wide mineral that managed to baffle just about everyone I talked to, to the extent that people were referring me to their mineral nerd friends with scary encyclopedic knowledge of minerals and gems to check it out and try to figure out just what it is, even then I didn’t get any definitive answers, unfortunately.

All I know of this piece is what was passed on from the dealer I bought it from and that it was supposedly found in the Arctic Circle. Which may be a big hint as to why this piece is so unique. It also came with a specimen of what appears to be Glendonite which was paired together by locale, which upon further research makes sense as Glendonite is a calcite pseudomorph of Ikaite found in the Arctic areas. Some people I talked to say this piece is a pseudomorph itself but I’m not convinced of that just yet. (For the non-mineral nerds out there a psuedomorph is a mineral compound resulting from a process by which the primary mineral component is replaced by another, although the compound maintains constant appearance and dimensions.)

I did a bunch of research trying to find anything remotely similar and all I can say is that it looks like Calcite in its overall form. I would love to hear your comments if you have any ideas about what this might be or just how rare/special this piece might be. Dimensions are about 2″ wide X .75 inch thick X 1.25 inches

Check the photos and descriptions below. (the photos are creative commons in case you want to do something cool and non-commercial in nature with them)

Staked hexagonal plates as well as what appears to be the place it was connected to rock on the bottom right. The faded blue/white on the bottom segment probably holds a clue as to what this is.

This is the flip side of the previous photo which features smaller hexagonal stair step snowflake platters and some really interesting 3 dimensional hexagon discs on the left.

A close up of the hexagonal discs as mentioned in the previous description. For a higher detail photo click any of the images. (there are even higher resolution photos available from that page as well)

Here is a top view of the piece in all its glory. It is very snowflake-like in its appearance and have thought perhaps the formation might have something to do with the supposed local this specimen hails from (Arctic Circle)

Close up of the staisteps which form the back side of photos 2 & 3.

Another shot of the Alien micro-chip.

Please don’t hesitate to leave comments with your ideas or pass it on to someone who you know that might be able to help figure this out.

Check out the archive of other Cabinet of Curiosities posts

Heres what people speculate: Add your expert opinion to the list

Tyler/KC:  it has cleavage like a feldspar.. i think its a amazonite…

thanks!

kris

This article was posted on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 at 11:44 pm in the category: CabinetOfCuriosities.