Pyrite with Barite, on Quartz

specimen number:
2341142

location:
Bou Nahas Mine, Oumjrane, Alnif Cercle, Tinghir, Draa-Tafilalet, Morocco

description:
Neat and attractive combination piece, a shapely and aesthetically placed grouping of colorless glassy quartz crystals measuring to almost 1.0 cm in size, these hosting crystal groupings of pyrite measuring to 5.5 cm in size. The pyrite crystals of forming casts after now gone tabular crystals of barite in some areas. Colorless mostly gemmy blocky tabular crystals of barite to 1.5 cm in size are scattered across the top of the pyrite crystals. This is in really good condition. From 2013, the specimen comes with a previous label from the collection of Jan Erik Larsen.

Copper exploitation at the Bou Nahas Mine in the Oumjrane district of Morocco dates back historically to the Middle Ages or earlier, with formal modern operations initiated during the French colonial period before being abandoned in the mid-1970s, and later successfully re-opened around late 2011. Geologically, the deposit is situated within the eastern Anti-Atlas region, where steeply dipping polymetallic hydrothermal veins cut across Upper Ordovician detrital sedimentary rock units such as sandstones, quartzites, shales, and marls. These primary vein systems are associated with post-Variscan hydrothermal activity and local faulting, while subsequent supergene alteration and oxidation processes between the Jurassic and Neogene periods produced secondary mineralization zones rich in carbonates and native metals.

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