Xenotime-Y

specimen number:
1052756

location:
Datas, Minas Gerais, Brazil

description:
An antique set of three loose crystals of xenotime-Y in a vial. The specimen comes with an antique label as shown at the end of the video. The crystals exhibit translucency. The original acquisition date for this was 1907. The size provided is the size of the vial.

The Datas mining district, situated in the Espinhaco Range of Minas Gerais, Brazil, is a historically significant locality renowned for its alluvial and primary diamond extractions. Geologically, the region features a complex Proterozoic sedimentary sequence composed of quartzites, metaconglomerates, and schists belonging to the Espinhaco Supergroup. Intense regional metamorphism and structural folding sheared these rock layers, creating gold-bearing and diamond-bearing metaconglomerates that weathered over millennia to feed rich, secondary alluvial deposits and gravel terraces along local river basins. Historically, diamond mining and surface quarrying began around the mid-eighteenth century following the expansion of gold exploration from nearby Diamantina, with formal colonial regulations establishing strict district boundaries by the 1730s. Large-scale manual open-cut workings and extensive river-diversion gravel panning operated heavily under Portuguese crown monopolies and subsequent private leases throughout the nineteenth century, but production gradually shifted away from primary corporate entities toward localized independent miners, known as garimpeiros, whose small-scale artisanal operations continue to systematically rework the historical gravels through 2026.

Themak Ede was a prominent regional mineral dealer and natural history supplier based in Temesvar, Austria-Hungary (modern-day Timisoara, Romania), who operated a commercial trade in geological specimens during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Operating in a geographically advantageous hub near the mineral-rich Banat and Transylvanian mining districts, he specialized in sourcing, preparing, and distributing classic regional mineral species, including high-quality sulfides, sulfosalts, and native elements from historic localities like Nagyag, Kapnik, and Oravica. His business caterered to the growing global demand for systematic mineral collections, supplying authentic, well-documented study specimens to major European university institutes, natural history museums, and prominent private collectors of the era. He maintained an active commercial presence through published sales catalogs and mineral exchanges until the geopolitical disruptions of World War I and the subsequent dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire significantly altered regional trade networks, bringing an end to his formal commercial mineral operations by the early 1920s.

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