Home > California Borate Minerals – July 22 > MS0970 Kurnakovite, Inderite

Kurnakovite, Inderite - Sold


Kurnakovite and inderite are polymorphous magnesium borate minerals. Godlevsky (1940) described kurnakovite, naming it in honor of Professor Nikolai Semenovich Kurnakov (1860-1941), Russian mineralogist, Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry, Moscow. (Godlevsky, 1937) named inderite after its type locality at Lake Inder, Kazakhstan. This is a fine specimen, consisting of an especially transparent and nearly colorless kurnakovite crystal, intergrown with prismatic inderite crystals. Inderite is very brittle, and the inderite crystal sections are not terminated; the kurnakovite crystal is about 80% complete. Nevertheless, this is a high quality example for both species. Specimens with two co-crystallization polymorphs are rare, and have special meaning for mineral physicists.