New Mexico Mineral Symposium — Abstracts

Some statistics on the Paul Seel micromount collection in the Denver Museum are:

• 301 quartz crystals, many showing unusual crystal faces;
• 198 topaz crystals, many crystal forms shown;
• 12,000+ specimens of which 11,142 are currently cataloged;
• 803 species;
• 98 countries represented;
• 367 specimens from type localities;
• 110 minerals from type localities;
• 1,518 Specimens in rakestraw boxes with an age of 50+ yrs;
• 5,000+ diamond crystals showing many crystal forms; and
• 98 unknowns.

In the Denver Museum of Natural History there are three other micromount collections, Zimmerman, Anderson, and Withers collections containing 3,669 specimens; 729 species, 188 of which are not duplicated in the Paul Seel collection; and 76 unknowns.

• From Arizona there are 822 specimens from 42 localities representing 88 species.
• From Colorado there are 345 specimens from 50 localities representing 75 species.
• From New Mexico there are 273 specimens from 26 localities representing 65 species.
• From Texas there are 30 specimens from 8 localities representing 10 species.
• From Utah there are 423 specimens from 33 localities representing 68 species.

In 1992, Paul and Hilde Seel's mineralogic friends, P. Barand, B. Bachet, and C. Brassy of the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, France, named a new mineral in their honor, seelite. Paul and Hilde were very much a part of the mineral-collecting hobby. They traveled all over the world attending meetings, giving lectures, collecting and trading specimens while making friends. Paul and Hilde were a warm, generous couple and it was always a pleasure to be with them. Paul died in 1982 and Hilde died in 1987. His micromount collection of more than 12,000 specimens was donated to the Denver Museum of Natural History and is the largest part of the museum micromount collection. This is one of the largest cataloged micromount collections in a United States museum that is documented and available for research.

Selected slides of some of the unusual specimens will be shown.