Painite

specimen number:
9506852

location:
Kyauk-Pyat-That, Mogok, Pyin-Oo-Lwin, Mandalay, Myanmar

description:

Superb lustrous sharply terminated crystal 1.8 cm in length coming off matrix. This is in super condition and outstanding for the species.

Kyauk-Pyat-That, located in the famed Mogok Stone Tract of Myanmar, is globally recognized as the type locality for the ultra-rare mineral painite. Geologically, the area is characterized by complex metamorphic belts where intrusive leucogranites and syenites interact with high-grade marbles, creating skarn and contact-metasomatic zones. Painite itself is a complex calcium-zirconium-aluminum borate that incorporates trace amounts of chromium and vanadium. Historically, the first specimens were discovered here in the 1950s by British gemologist Arthur C.D. Pain. For decades, only a couple of individual crystals were known to exist worldwide, making it one of the rarest minerals on Earth before subsequent discoveries in the early 2000s uncovered additional material in the weathered skarns and alluvial gravels of the region.

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