Lithiophilite

specimen number:
2354149

location:
Midnight Owl Mine, Yavapai Co., Arizona, USA

description:
Dark masses of lithiophilite throughout matrix. Nice example for the species.

Located in the White Picacho District of Yavapai County, Arizona, the Midnight Owl Mine is a historic pegmatite deposit that was actively worked in the mid-twentieth century, particularly during the 1940s and 1950s, for lithium, beryllium, and tantalum. The locality features zoned granitic pegmatite dikes intruded into Precambrian metamorphic host rocks, with distinct quartz-microcline cores surrounded by intermediate zones rich in lithium-bearing minerals. The mine became celebrated among mineral collectors for producing well-formed masses and coarse crystals of lithiophilite, a lithium manganese phosphate species that often exhibits dark reddish-brown to salmon-pink coloration and typical cleavage surfaces. Weathering of the primary lithiophilite at Midnight Owl Mine frequently produces secondary dark brown to black manganese oxides along fracture surfaces, making fresh pinkish masses with dark rims a recognizable feature of specimens from this classic Arizona granite pegmatite locality.

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