Detailed information
Species
Rhabdophane-(Ce)
Dimensions
7 x 37 x 8
mm
Weight
3 g
Locality
Mont Saint-Hilaire La Vallée-du-Richelieu RCM Montérégie, Québec, Canada
Condition
No recorded repairs
Quite simply a remarkable Rhabdophane-(Ce) crystal from Mont Saint-Hilaire and likely to have come out of the quarry pre-1990s, based on other specimen images online. At 3.7 cm in length, it is a significant individual crystal for the locality. As with all of the larger Rhabdophane-(Ce) crystals from MSH it has a rather rough, mottled beige-brown colour. It’s a superb example that would fit nicely into an advanced MSH collection. If you are new to this locality, it is one of those rare mineralogical wonders of nature, with a recorded 439 species and is type locality to a staggering 73 species. The quarry is situated in Rouville County in Quebec, Canada, a little due east of Montreal. For many years two quarries worked adjacent to one another, the Poudrette and De-Mix, only separated by an unexcavated demarcation wall. Once this was mined out, the two quarries amalgamated, so it is now the convention to name the whole quarry as Poudrette. It is not known which quarry this specimen came out of at the time of mining (i.e. either Poudrette or De-Mix), so it is simply given as Mont Saint-Hilaire. A superb specimen.