Home > American Minerals V – October 1 > MS1656 Paulingite-Ca (rare!)

Paulingite-Ca (rare!) - Sold


Paulingite-Ca is a hydrous calcium aluminosilicate. Kamb & Oke (1960) named paulingite (without hyphen) after Nobel laureate Linus Pauling (1901-1994), whose early work as a mineralogist earned him the Roebling Medal from the Mineralogical Society of America. Type paulingite was potassium dominant and is now called paulingite-K. When Tschnerich & Wise (1982) found further localities and chemical variation in paulingite, they noted this material with dominant calcium. Ultimately the International Mineralogical Association revised zeolite nomenclature, designating paulingite as a series name, with the original becoming paulingite-K and this material becoming paulingite-Ca (Coombs et al. 1997). This sample comes from the type locality for paulingite-Ca. Paulingite-Ca is much rarer than paulingite-K.

Paulingite here forms dodecahedral microcrystals in vesicular basalt. This specimen was part of the Charles Trantham (1936-2020) estate. A vintage Al McGuinness (1926-1990) label accompanies this specimen.