Jamesonita
Jamesonita is a mineral with formula Pb₄FeSb₆S₁₄, in the Sulfosales group. This specimen comes from Mina Quiruvilca, Distrito de Quiruvilca, Santiago de Chuco, La Libertad, Perú.
Description
Thumbnail with fine acicular crystals of bright metallic jamesonite on a white barite matrix. A beautiful piece under magnification.
About Jamesonita
Jamesonite is a lead, iron, and antimony sulfosalt. And unlike the fine, hair-like fibers seen in other deposits, jamesonite from Quiruvilca grows into thicker, rigid metallic needles radiating from central focal points. These radial clusters form distinctive 'hedgehog' aggregates and small metallic stars, demonstrating how the mineral's directional crystal structure can produce a strikingly rigid, sculptural habit.
About the locality
Mina Quiruvilca, from the Quechua «Sacred Tooth», is a major Andean mining district at about 3,800 m. After the formal operation collapsed in 2017, it entered a legal limbo marked by informal mining, conflict and poor safety. Fine collector specimens belong to an earlier period and are now increasingly scarce.
Technical data
- Catalogue No.
- 0678
- Composition
- Pb₄FeSb₆S₁₄
- Name
- Jamesonita
- Group
- Sulfosales
- Category
- Meritum Persé
- Matrix
- Barita
- Mine
- Mina Quiruvilca
- District / Municipality
- Distrito de Quiruvilca
- Province
- Santiago de Chuco
- Region
- La Libertad
- Country
- Perú
- Size (cm)
- 3 x 3 x 2.5
- Etymology
- Honors Robert Jameson, an influential (and rather stubborn) Scottish mineralogist who taught at the University of Edinburgh, where he had a young Charles Darwin as a student. The relationship turned out to be a disaster. Darwin wrote in his autobiography that Jameson's lectures felt so "incredibly boring" that they made him hate geology for years. Jameson belonged to the old guard: he maintained that water created all rocks ("Neptunism") and rejected new volcanic theories.
- Quality
- Buena
- Value trend
- Estable
Related specimens
- Barita — Perú
- Barita — Perú
- Cuarzo — Perú
- Jamesonita — México
- Jamesonita — Perú
- Oropimente — Perú
- Rodocrosita — Perú
- Rodocrosita — Perú