Quartz

specimen number:
2312149

location:
Muzo, Boyaca, Colombia

description:
A neat glassy gem quality crystal of quartz. Slight damage present as seen. Complete all around, this comes with an antique label as shown at the end of the video.

The Muzo district in Boyaca, Colombia, is the most famous emerald-producing region in the world, with a mining history dating back to pre-Columbian times when indigenous peoples extracted the green gems before Spanish colonial conquest in the sixteenth century. Geologically, the deposits are situated within the Eastern Cordillera of the Andes and are hosted in Cretaceous sedimentary sequences consisting of black shales, limestones, and evaporites. The emeralds formed through unique fluid-rock interactions where hydrothermal solutions, driven by tectonic compression and basinal dewatering, migrated along fault zones and breccia pipes, reacting with chromium-bearing and vanadium-bearing organic-rich shales to precipitate high-quality beryl crystals in calcite and dolomite veins.

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