Cinnabar with Quartz, Dolomite

specimen number:
9892021

location:
Wanshan mine, Tongren, Guizhou, China

description:
Deep red lustrous twinned crystals of cinnabar to 1.3 cm in size on a matrix of crystallized quartz with minor dolomite. Classic Chinese specimen.

The Wanshan mercury mine in Tongren, Guizhou Province, China, boasts a remarkably long history of exploitation spanning over six centuries of organized industrial records (with small-scale artisanal extraction tracing back more than two millennia to early imperial dynasties). Large-scale state-directed modern operations ultimately ceased in October 2001 due to resource depletion, transforming the region into an industrial heritage and tourism site. Geologically, the deposit is hosted within carbonate sequences of the Cambrian and Lower Ordovician strata, where hydrothermal fluids deposited massive accumulations of cinnabar and native mercury along fault zones, fractures, and favorable bedding planes within dolostones and limestones.

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