Cinnabar xls on furnace brick (RARE old Texas!) James Carter Coll.

Item Description

A RARE old-time artifact of the mercury mining and smelting industry at Terlingua! Scintillating, gemmy, cinnabar microcrystals richly precipitated onto the man-made brick that lined the furnace during the smelting process of the mercury ore. Bricks were a common furnace lining for smelting processes there. Undoubtedly older material, as the mercury mines (mostly cinnabar) opened in the 1880s and finally closed after World War II. See the 1990 Mineralogical Record article in Vol. 21, No. 3. Ex Dr. James Carter Collection. James was a professor of Geology and former Department Chairman at the University of Texas at Dallas for 43 years until he retired in 2008. A true geoscientist, he studied and performed research on a remarkable variety of geological aspects. NASA asked Carter to help create a material that was similar to actual lunar regolith. The lunar regolith simulant, or fake moon dirt, he developed was used by NASA and other researchers for studies in support of future human activities on the moon. He passed away in 2019. We just acquired part of his collection. Read about James at: https://www.utdallas.edu/news/faculty-staff/carter-tribute-2019/. A rare, perhaps unique Terlingua artifact with cinnabar crystals. value?