Chalcocite

specimen number:
5008123

location:
Las Cruces Mine, Sevilla, Spain

description:
Lustrous metallic crystals of chalcocite on matrix with minor pyrite. Collected around the year 2019.

The Las Cruces Mine, located in the Sevilla Province of southern Spain, is situated on the eastern edge of the prolific Iberian Pyrite Belt. Geologically, the deposit consists of a volcanogenic massive sulfide ore body hosted within late Devonian to early Carboniferous volcanic and sedimentary rocks. A defining geological feature of Las Cruces is its exceptionally rich supergene enrichment zone, which developed from the weathering and oxidation of the primary sulfides, capped by a gold-bearing gossan and buried beneath a thick sequence of impermeable Miocene marls. Historically, the blind deposit was discovered through geophysical exploration in 1994, with open-pit mining and on-site hydrometallurgical processing officially commencing in the mid-2000s to produce high-grade copper cathodes.

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