THE MINERAL LEADHILLITE


Leadhillite is an attractive, brightly lustered and sometimes colorful mineral that is often associated with other rare and beautiful oxidation minerals. Its list of associated minerals reads like a collectors wishlist. Leadhillite is named after its aptly named type locality of Leadhills, Lanarkshire, Strathclyde, Scotland. It forms in the oxidation zone of lead deposits as a secondary mineral, sometimes pseudomorphing other lead minerals and sometimes being pseudomorphed by other lead minerals. A pseudomorph is a mineral that has replaced either the structure or chemistry of an earlier mineral, without distorting the outward shape of the original mineral; thereby producing a crystal that has the shape of one mineral, but is actually either chemically and/or structurally a different mineral. Platy or tabular pseudohexagonal cyclic twinned crystals of leadhillite are the typical habit as well as prismatic crystals. The best specimens have come from Mammoth Mine, Tiger, Arizona. Leadhillite is trimorphous with the minerals macphersonite and susannite. Trimorphs are three different minerals that share the same chemistry, but have different structures. Leadhillite can be quite a popular collection mineral if it were only more available on the mineral markets.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS:

 

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