Pyrochlore

Item Description

A sharp 360-degree mottled reddish-brown Pyrochlore Group octahedral crystal with bright waxy lustre and interesting surface features from an obscure Siberian massif, about 1000 km NW of Lake Baikal. The locality is well-known for such crystals, which can reach over over a huge 1 kilogram in size! Pyrochlore is an uncommon niobium oxide with numerous possible cations. The termination is dinged and the contact at one corner has no damage, per se. These came out in the 1980s and to market in the West in the 1990s, probably through the Fersman Museum in Moscow. An excellent, highly representative thumbnail from the locale.