Pectolite (unusual locality specimen)

Item Description

The famous Prospect Park Quarry in New Jersey is one of the great trap rock localities in the United States. It famously produced some truly iconic and fine quality zeolite minerals (and associated species) for decades. Pectolite is fairly rare from this quarry, and this particular specimen is quite different than any other Pectolite I've seen from Prospect Park. The piece hosts a predominant radial group of Pectolite with a few partial "sprays" of Pectolite flaring out of the side, sitting on lustrous light green-yellow Datolite on basalt matrix. The Pectolite group measures 4.7 cm at its widest dimension. The color is a "dirty" pink hue, which is rare for Prospect Park, as most of the Pectolites from this locality are either a light cream color or a soft beige hue. I can't remember seeing another pink Pectolite from Prospect Park, and this one is certainly different than all other Pectolites I've seen from this quarry. If you look closely, you can see there a few hollow "casts" of Datolite replacing Anhydrite, which dissolved away leaving the imprints of its striated prism faces still in place. Certainly a different style and color for the locality, and just a cool specimen that would make a nice addition to any trap rock collection or a suite of minerals from New Jersey. From the collection of Vasco Trancoso, a medical doctor and prominent mineral collector from near Lisbon, Portugal (https://www.mindat.org/user-11954.html). He assembled his mineral collection over the course of 60 years, and built a fine worldwide display collection that we recently purchased. This piece is pictured on mindat.org at https://www.mindat.org/photo-186343.html