Fluororichterite

specimen number:
2354276

location:
Gooderham, Haliburton Co., Ontario, Canada

description:
Lustrous black sharply terminated crystals to 4.0 cm in height on matrix. In good condition all around.

The Gooderham area in Haliburton County, Ontario, Canada, lies within the Central Metasedimentary Belt of the Grenville Geological Province, where intense Precambrian metamorphism and skarn development created rich calcite vein-dyke deposits. Regional exploration and mineral collecting in the twentieth century targeted these skarns, marbles, and pegmatites, which hosted historic operations for materials like iron, fluorite, and apatite alongside small-scale specimen digging. Gooderham is world-renowned among collectors for producing exceptional fluoro-richterite, an amphibole group mineral that forms sharp, lustrous, dark brown to black prismatic crystals embedded in orange calcite or coarse silicate matrix. These distinctive double-terminated specimens, often freed by etching away the enclosing calcite with mild acid, represent some of the finest examples of this species known to science.

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