Luiz Menezes and Daniel Atencio
Two forms of parisite: in an aggregate of crystals (at left) and inside one crystal (yellow-green mineral at right)Luiz Menezes and Daniel AtencioThe list of type minerals—minerals described for the first time—from Brazil grew to 68 unique species in June 2016 with the official recognition of parisite-(La). At the same time, the mineral ralstonite was renamed hydrokenoralstonite. These minerals are considered new only after approval of their detailed description by the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification (CNMNC) of the International Mineralogical Association (IMA), headquartered in Bochum, Germany. Parisite-(La) is a fluorocarbonate of lanthanum and calcium, associated with hematite and other rare-earth minerals. It was found in a mine in Novo Horizonte, in the Brazilian state of Bahia, and experts from the Federal Universities of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Ouro Preto (UFOP) and São Paulo (USP) worked on its description. Hydrokenoralstonite, analyzed at USP and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), is an aluminum fluoride hydrate. It was found in a Pitinga mine in Presidente Figueiredo, Amazonas State, where waimirite-(Y), another mineral, was discovered in 2014. According to Daniel Atencio, a professor of mineralogy at the USP Geosciences Institute who had a role in examining the two new type minerals, the total number of minerals identified in Brazil—an average of 1.8 per year—is still quite low, given the diversity of the country’s geological environments. “That average is certainly not reflective of Brazil’s mineral wealth, which is comparable to that of the United States and Russia,” he says. Among the 5,000 minerals recognized by the IMA, some 600 have been described in each of those countries.
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