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Wesselsite, SrCu[Si4O10], a further new gillespite-group mineral from the Kalahari Manganese Field, South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2018

G. Giester  and
B. Rieck
G. Giester
Affiliation:
Institut für Mineralogie und Kristallographie, Geozentrum, Universität Wien, Althanstr. 14, A-1090 Wien, Austria
B. Rieck
Affiliation:
Institut für Mineralogie und Kristallographie, Geozentrum, Universität Wien, Althanstr. 14, A-1090 Wien, Austria
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Abstract

Wesselsite, SrCu[Si4O10], is a new mineral species from the Wessels mine, Kalahari Manganese Field, South Africa, and it belongs to the gillespite group. Wesselsite is tetragonal, space group P4/ncc; the unit cell parameters, refined from Gandolfi film data, are a = 7.366(1), c = 15.574(3) Å V = 845.01 Å3. The strongest lines are (dobs/lobs/hkl) (7.79/35/002), (4.33/20/112), (3.89/20/004), (3.44/40/104), (3.33/100/202), (3.12/55/114), (3.03/50/212), (2.68/25/204), (2.61/30/220) and (2.32/30/116). Wesselsite is associated with hennomartinite, embedded in a matrix of sugilite, xonotlite, quartz and pectolite. Microprobe analyses of 111 samples show that it is the end-member of a solid solution series with effenbergerite, BaCu[Si4O10], with substitutions of Sr by Ba up to 50 mol.%. Wesselsite forms tiny subhedral plates in sizes not exceeding 50 × 50 × 5 µm, arranged in clusters of up to 200 µm. It shows a perfect cleavage parallel to {001}, has blue colour, white to light blue streak, and is uniaxial negative with ω = 1.630(2), ε = 1.590(5), strongly pleochroic from blue (ω) to pale blue (ε). The calculated density is 3.32 g cm−3, the measured density is 3.2(1) g cm−3.

Keywords

wesselsitestrontium copper silicategillespite groupeffenbergeritenew mineralKalahari Manganese FieldSouth Africa
Type
Mineralogy
Information
Mineralogical Magazine , Volume 60 , Issue 402 , October 1996 , pp. 795 - 798
Copyright
Copyright © The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1996

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