Rhodochrosite with Fluorite, Quartz

specimen number:
9507074

location:
Wutong Mine, Liubao, Cangwu Co., Wuzhou, Guangxi, China

description:
Pink to red slightly translucent lustrous to semi lustrous crystals of bladed rhodochrosite to 1.5 cm in size across the top of a crystallized colorless needlelike quartz matrix. Minor fluorite present. This is in good condition.

Discovered in 1958, the Wutong Mine near Liubao in Cangwu County, Wuzhou, Guangxi, China, originally operated for decades as a modest underground source for lead, zinc, and silver before gaining international renown in the early 2000s for producing world-class mineral specimens, eventually entering care-and-maintenance status around 2011. Geologically, the deposit sits within a regional fold belt of the Nanling metallogenic province, where a Cretaceous magmatic-hydrothermal system injected mineralizing fluids into tectonically disturbed Cambrian sedimentary host rocks consisting mainly of dark siltstones, shales, sandstones, and a structural chert marker bed. These hydrothermal veins created open-space cavities that fostered the crystallization of rare pink to cherry-red rhodochrosite specimens alongside various minerals such as fluorite, fluorapatite, etc.

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