Pyrite

specimen number:
1822127

location:
Cananea, Sonora, Mexico

description:
A grouping of large lustrous sorted elongated cubic pyrite crystals with little attached matrix. Very slight damage present on the back lower side of the grouping, this out of view when the piece is displayed properly. In good condition from the front. This has good luster and golden color. Quite choice for the species and locality.

Cananea, located in northern Sonora, Mexico, is defined geologically by a complex basement of Precambrian schist and granite overlain by Paleozoic sedimentary strata and intruded by Tertiary stocks of rhyolite and quartz monzonite porphyry that created one of the world's largest porphyry copper deposits. Mining operations began in the area during the colonial era with small-scale silver and gold extraction, but the region transformed into a global industrial powerhouse following large-scale commercial copper development in the late 19th century under American entrepreneur William Cornell Greene. The local mining history is also nationally significant because the historic 1906 Cananea miners strike acted as a major catalyst against the regime of Porfirio Diaz, ultimately helping to spark the Mexican Revolution. Today, operating as the Buenavista del Cobre mine under Grupo Mexico, it remains a massive open-pit extraction site vital to the global supply of copper.

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