Home > Mexico I – December 15 > MS1681 Beudantite

Beudantite - Sold


Beudantite is a lead iron arsenate sulfate hydroxide, and a member of the alunite supergroup (Bayliss et al., 2010). The mineral name honors François Sulpice Beudant (1787-1850), a French mineralogist at the l'Académie de Paris (now the Université de Paris) (Levy, 1826). Professor Beudant would go on to coin many mineral names, including anglesite bismuthinite, and cassiterite in his seminal 1832 Traité Élémentaire de Minéralogie.

This specimen consists of manganese oxide matrix, sometimes called wad. Straw-yellow beudantite crystals to 1 mm line a prominent vug, 2.6 × 1.3 cm, and another vug on the flip side, 1.6 × 0.9 cm. The luster is resinous, the beudantite crystals glinting as though metallic. Found summer 2020. Identification based on Raman spectroscopy. The exact locality at Santa Eulalia remains undisclosed, but it is likely one of the operating mines.