New Mexico Mineral Symposium — Abstracts

Most people who collect at the Harding pegmatite are familiar with the common minerals and the major ore minerals of the mine. Mixed in with these are small, rare grains of more unusual minerals, such as the bismuth minerals, that most collectors miss or do not recognize.

In this talk, I will comment on how to recognize some of these unusual minerals and I will comment on some features of their chemistry. Minerals included in this talk are native bismuth, bismuthinite, bismutite, bayerite, pucherite*, mottramite*, spessartine, zircon, thorite, and bertrandite.