Krohnkite

specimen number:
2063623

location:
Chuquicamata Mine, Calama, El Loa, Antofagasta, Chile

description:
A set of two loose crystallized beautiful blue translucent groupings of krohnkite. The size provided is in average between the two groupings. The specimen comes with a previous label from the collection of Ray DeMark. His label notes that this was a specimen obtained originally in 1916 through the Foote Mineral Company.

Located in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, the Chuquicamata Mine is the largest open-pit copper mine in the world by excavated volume. Its geology is defined by massive porphyry copper deposits hosted within intrusive rocks controlled by major fault systems, featuring extensive oxidation zones formed under arid conditions. Indigenous peoples worked the rich surface copper oxides in pre-Hispanic times, followed by small-scale colonial and 19th-century underground mining, before industrial-scale open-pit operations began in the early 20th century. The mine's unique hyper-arid oxidation zone serves as the type locality for krohnkite, a rare secondary sulfate mineral that forms vibrant blue or greenish-blue crystals and crusts through the evaporation of copper-bearing and sodium-rich solutions.

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