Home > American Minerals V – October 1 > MS1664 Volborthite
Volborthite - Sold
- Vanadium Queen mine
- La Sal
- San Juan County
- Utah
- U.S.A.
- 5.9 by 4.1 by 2.7 cm – Miniature specimen (fits into a 5 cm cube)
Volborthite is a hydrated copper vanadate. Hess (1838) named the species after its discoverer, Aleksandr Fedorovich von Volborth (1800-1876), Russian paleontologist. Volborthite has unusual magnetic properties (Yoshida et al., 2012; Hiroi et al., 2019) which may be responsible for two similar but different crystal structures reported for natural and synthetic samples (Ishikawa et al., 2012).
Volborthite here forms intersecting radiating sprays to 2.5 cm, flat-lying on sandstone matrix. This specimen was part of the Jack Parnau (1906-1990) collection; Mineralogical Research Company and Jack Parnau labels accompany the specimen.
