Cuprite

specimen number:
2063650

location:
Moonta Mines, South Australia, Australia

description:
Sharp lustrous deep red to almost black octahedral crystals of cuprite measuring to 0.5 cm in size on matrix. In good condition. Nice old time piece from Australia, this comes with a previous labels from the A. E. Seaman Mineral Museum at Michigan Technological University.

The Moonta Mines on the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia represent a historic nineteenth century mining field developed within ancient Proterozoic porphyry rocks, where rich quartz and pegmatitic veins filled fractures to form extensive copper lodes. Following its discovery in 1861, the site rapidly grew into one of the largest and most prosperous copper mining operations in the British Empire, heavily driven by immigrant Cornish miners and advanced steam-powered extraction until operations wound down in the early twentieth century. While primary production focused on massive sulfides and native copper, the oxidation zones of these orebodies yielded exceptional secondary mineral specimens, including brilliant red crystalline aggregates of cuprite, making the locality historically significant for fine mineral collecting.

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