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Claus Hedegaard

Aquamarine

Specimen of Aquamarine Aquamarine is strictly speaking blue Beryl, but nowadays the name is used rather indiscriminately to any greenish or bluish Beryl. It commonly occurs in pegmatites, and since the late 1980s superb and abundant material has come from pegmatites in northern Pakistan, practically making collectors ignore the classic deposits in Russia, Brasil, and elsewhere that actually also supply quite nice material.
One of the pictures shows a fragment of a large green Aquamarine from the border area of Namibia and Angola - I honestly don't know where it comes from - which is a common appearance of commercial lapidary material. The other shows a piece of densely intergrown black Tourmaline with an interesting 'nail head' Aquamarine crystal (I really should get this cleaned!) from the Erongo Complex in Namibia. This is a bizarre habit of crystals, of which a handful or two were found in 2002. Specimen of Aquamarine from Erongo.

Specimen Handling

Aquamarine is for all practical purposes stable in a normal household environment. It is not harmed by light, changes in temperature in the normal comfort range, or known to decompose. Aquamarine specimens can be brittle and should be handled with care like any other mineral specimen. Aquamarine is not appreciably soluble in water.

Bibliography

Anthony, John Williams, Richard A. Bideaux, Kenneth W. Bladh & Monte C. Nichols. 1995. Handbook of mineralogy, vols. 2.1
Blackburn, William H. & William H. Dennen. 1997. Encyclopedia of mineral names. Canadian Mineralogist, special publication 1.
Gaines, Richard W., H. Catherine W. Skinner, Eugene E. Foord, Brian Mason, Abraham Rosenzweig & Vandall T. King. 1997. Dana's new mineralogy: the system of mineralogy of James Dwight Dana and Edward Salisbury Dana, 8th ed.
Hintze, Carl (ed.) 1921-1931. Handbuch der Mineralogie, vol. 1, section 4, part 1.
Hintze, Carl (ed.) 1889-1897. Handbuch der Mineralogie, vol. 2.
Noe-Nygaard, Arne. 1966. Mineralogi, 3rd ed.
Ramdohr, Paul & Hugo Strunz. 1980. Klockmann's Lehrbuch der Mineralogie, 16th ed.
Roberts, Willard Lincoln, Thomas J. Campbell & George Robert Rapp jr. 1990. Encyclopedia of Minerals 2nd ed.
Sinkankas, John. 1964. Mineralogy.

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