PARAVAUXITE on WAVELLITE

The Siglo Veinte mine (Siglo XX mine) in Potosí Department, Bolivia is renowned for a suite of unusual iron aluminium phosphate species, of which several were first described there, but not all are pretty. Paravauxite is one of them which, despite forming really sharp, bladed, triclinic crystals, they get overlooked because of their rather mundane cream colour. That said, these are excellent crystals of Paravauxite, a species which ordinarily is very rare and even rarer as crystals visible without magnification. This flat plate-like specimen presents excellent Paravauxite crystals (to 6.5 mm in length) on top of another phosphate - Wavellite - as small botryoidal crystals of a similar colour. Older material from the David Hardman Collection.