Molybdenite

specimen number:
8821968

location:
Wolfram Camp, Queensland, Australia

description:
Bright lustrous foliated crystals of metallic molybdenite with minor quartz. Good example for the species from a classic locality. Some native bismuth and quartz are present as well.

Wolfram Camp, located in the Hodgkinson goldfield of north Queensland, Australia, has a mining history that began with the discovery of tungsten and other rare metals around 1891, triggering a major rush and subsequent periods of intensive underground and open-cut extraction through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Geologically, the deposit is situated within the greisen-altered margins and roof zones of the late Paleozoic Ootann Supersuite granite intrusives, where volatile-rich hydrothermal fluids formed complex, erratic quartz pipes and vugs near the contact with surrounding metamorphic host rocks. Mineralogically, the site is famous for its unique pipe-like assemblages containing coarse-grained wolframite, molybdenite, and bismuth, accompanied by various sulfide minerals and occasional well-formed crystalline vug specimens that have attracted significant global interest.

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