Hematite with Fluorapatite, Fluororichterite

specimen number:
2282014

location:
La Celia, Jumilla, Murcia, Spain

description:
Rich metallic platy crystallized hematite on matrix with minor fluorapatite and fluoro-richterite. In good condition.

The La Celia quarry, situated near Jumilla in the Murcia region of southeastern Spain, is a mineral locality renowned for its classic apatite specimens. Geologically, the deposit is hosted within an outcrop of ultrapotassic volcanic rocks known as jumillite, a rare variety of lamproite that intruded local Mesozoic sedimentary strata during the late Miocene epoch. The volcanic rock contains numerous gas cavities and fractures where hydrothermal fluids deposited exceptional, transparent, gemmy greenish-yellow crystals of fluorapatite, historically referred to as "esparraguina" due to their asparagus-like color, alongside iron-rich phlogopite and pseudobrookite. Human exploitation of the site dates back to ancient Iberian and Roman times, when the apatite-rich rock was utilized for tools and ornamental items, but formal quarrying operations peaked during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Large-scale mining was carried out between the 1870s and the 1920s to extract the phosphate-rich rock for industrial agricultural fertilizer production, with commercial operations coming to a halt by the 1930s when richer phosphate deposits were discovered elsewhere.

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